lO 



ductive as well as beautiful. Economy would follow in the track 

 of wealth and grace. The age of labor-saving machines would 

 come to understand that the best of these are natural influences 

 themselves. 



You can see from the special turn I give this theme that I do 

 not believe that the destiny of New England is to cede the hands 

 that guide the plough to manufactures, and to reckon, in another 

 century, her agriculture as a lost art. I love the joy of her coun- 

 try side too much ; I honor too profoundly her moral and politi- 

 cal strength in her rural communities, to think approvingly of 

 such a change. I prefer to look for an age when sweeter com- 

 pensations of rustic life shall surround the feverish excitement 

 of our cities ; when stronger attractions shall retain our youth 

 upon the soil ; when, amid richer acres and fairer homes, our 

 farmers, who have most of all given pledges to lo)'alty by joining 

 their fortunes to their mother earth, shall hold with stronger 

 hand the traditions of liberty ; but I only dare to speak of this as 

 possible through that wide culture in which science bears its part. 

 Again, I specify the help which science renders to the farmer 

 by enabling him t(^ meet successfully the pests and scourges let 

 loose by the animal or vegetable world upon his crops. 



The husbandman has indeed many races to run with the hosts 

 of nature in harv^esting his season's work. A myriad of unbid- 

 den guests are hungry for it ; green or dry, in the bud or fruit, it 

 never comes amiss to their ravenous jaws. Insect armies mi- 

 grate across a continent, leaving a desert as they go. The air 

 is dusty with disease to the growing grain, as sometimes with 

 pestilence to men. Ever since the day when sacred prophecy 

 interpreted the locust swarms as the wrath of God, agriculture 

 has had to fight for its own. And it is here that the eager curi- 

 osity which loves to explore the forms and laws of every life, 

 though that life may only be a microscopic pcnnt, or a noxious 

 and loathsome thing, does good service to the cultivator of the 



