THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 33 



larger portion of what he sows, the results are the 

 same to him, as if he had scattered his seed upon the 

 high-road, upon the barren rock, or in the midst of a 

 furze-brake. 



To borrow an illustration from the Quarterly Journal 

 of Agriculture, * It is calculated that only one third of 

 the seed-corn sown on the best land grows, the other 

 two thirds are destroyed. The quantity of seed sown 

 in Great Britain and Ireland annually amounts to seven 

 millions of quarters. Two thirds are rendered unpro- 

 ductive by some agency which has hitherto been 

 uncontrolled. Thus there is annually wasted a quantity 

 which would support more than a million of human 

 beings.* But is it, we may ask in the language of a 

 popular preacher of the day, strictly correct to say that 

 all this is wasted ? Are human beings the sum total of 

 God's creation here below, and are there no other 

 pensioners on God's bounty ? Who then has made 

 and who supplies the ravens, the sparrows, and the 

 other multitudinous tribes of busy life? All are God's 

 creatures, and our heavenly Father feedeth all. He 

 feedeth them by man's instrumentality, rendering the 

 necessities of man, instrumental to the supplies of the 

 inferior creatures ; and then turning his all-working 



