HOW TO BE BETTER FARMERS. 57 



all animals secondarily, are formed out of the cartli, and that 

 to the earth, talcing the term as implying the aggregate of our 

 plants, they return. 



The conditions of plant growth having been supplied by the 

 Creator, plants of some kind, such as the soil and climate of 

 cacli locality are adapted to produce, and such as have the 

 power to keep down other species — for there is war in the plant 

 world as well as in the animal — will grow. Animal life follows 

 by an order of Divine Providence. Wherever there are plants, 

 there will be animals. The fiat of Omnipotence, that both 

 increase and multiply, has gone forth, and will be obeyed. The 

 laws by which inert matter, as locked up in the soil or floating 

 in the air, arranges itself in forms of beauty, and life, and hap- 

 piness, are God's laws, not man's. Whether it is in the power 

 of the human race to increase the aggregate productions of the 

 earth, is perhaps doubtful. But within certain limits, it is 

 ours to decide what the productions shall be ; whether woody 

 plants or farinaceous — whether domestic animals, or wild. 



Here then comes in the vocation of the farmer. You may 

 not be able to make your grounds produce more than they 

 would have produced, if you had left them altogether alone, 

 nor even as much ; but you can make them produce what you 

 need and what a grateful market will pay you well for, when 

 you have it in excess of your home wants. Instead of tall trees 

 and rampant underbrush, and beasts that make night and day 

 hideous, of which, if left to themselves, the land would pro- 

 duce more than enough, you can make them produce corn and 

 the grasses, and then butter and cheese, beef, pork, veal, mut- 

 ton, skins, wool, whatever will feed and clothe a growing popu- 

 lation. This acre you can bid to grow the cereals ; that you 

 can teach to grow esculent roots ; many you can engage to 

 grow grasses perpetually ; and some which will grow nothing 

 else, you can compel to grow fuel. By a wise forethought you 

 can make every acre contribute to your own and the general 

 good. Such dominion is given to the farmer over the field, and 

 even the beasts of the field — over all the productive powers of 

 the earth — a dominion, one would think, adequate to satisfy 

 any ordinary ambition. 



Why the farmer should not be contented with his position — 

 more than contented — proud of it — I cannot tell, and I do not 



