68 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



' ' Kornhaus ' ' devised a means of rendering their own wheat 

 " bakeable " by artificial desiccation. But that will not 

 produce gluten. German farmers grow our wheat, as French 

 vine-growers of the humbler sort grow what the late M. Foex, 

 when Principal of the Montpellier College, termed " demo- 

 cratic " wines, for the sake of a big yield. But the one 

 makes inferior bread, as the other makes insipid " Aramon." 



Why not, in ordinary times of peace and security, leave 

 wheat growing, beyond what naturally fits into our rotation, 

 to those who can produce it both much more cheaply and of 

 decidedly better quality, and employ our acres to produce 

 what will bring in more money at the same time that, 

 instead of exhausting and fouling, it improves the soil in 

 its condition and heart ? 



Archdeacon Paley's famous argument about a watch 

 is generally considered a good one. It was to this effect, 

 that, if he were to find a watch, composed of so many 

 different parts, each of which was manifestly designed to 

 perform a certain and distinct function, he would with 

 confidence conclude that the watch was made advisedly 

 to accomplish a certain object, and that, being so designed, 

 it could not be a fortuitous production, but must have a 

 maker. And this reasoning he applied to the world com- 

 posed, as it is, of so many different parts, each evidently 

 designed to perform some function peculiar to itself. Those 

 different parts obviously includes those remarkable differ- 

 ences in climate, soil and geographical position which 

 qualify one country to produce cotton, another tea, a third 

 good bakeable wheat, and a fourth luxuriant green crops 

 and roots. To turn their various functions topsy-turvy, 

 to want to produce early potatoes in Aberdeenshire rather 

 than in Cornwall and the Channel Islands, and plant St. 

 Dunstan's famous fig tree, which produced tasty beccaficos to 

 Charles Lamb's delight, in the Shetlands, instead of in West 

 Tarring, and so on, manifestly would be acting very foolishly 

 and in opposition to what both Men enius Agrippa and Saint 

 Paul have laid down as plain common sense. That applies 

 a fortiori to the produce of different countries such as 

 Manitoba, Argentina, and our own. The big wheel in the 

 Watch cannot do the work of the small, nor the chain the 



