104 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of the sunsliine, into those dark forests of the future yet to 

 be shone into. 



And this prospective power throws the sunshine in advance 

 of the sun, and enables us to see the beautiful in advance of 

 others. He wiio climbs the lofty mountain peak, may see the 

 sun, while the vale below is in darkness ; and let him who thus 

 sees the sun hold up a mirror, and he may by reflection throw 

 down the sunshine upon some chosen s])ot, wliile all around is 

 yet in darkness. Such is the power of anticipation. 



To no class of men does nature and nature's God more thor- 

 oughly teach prospective lessons than to the tillers of the soil. 

 God himself, earth's first and greatest farmer, has left the 

 strongest proofs of agricultural skill in this department of 

 antecedent provision of prospcction. And what He has done 

 on the grandest scale, man must in proportion do, to be suc- 

 cessful. 



Let us look, then, for a moment at the manner in which God 

 prepared his garden, the earth, for the reception of the fruits 

 and flowers which have since flourished in it, even making these 

 count towards man's creation and subsequent growth. We 

 to-day are the fruits of great culture, reaching back and back 

 by a chain of events, to eartli's earliest infancy. A few links 

 in that chain we must notice. The creation of our rock-ribbed 

 earth, the transmutation of those rocks into soil, the fertiliza- 

 tion of that soil, the elaborate adaptation to man, and the con- 

 tinual expansion of his faculties. 



Of the creation I need not say much, since geologists have 

 often told you its liistory. They have told you of the granite 

 foundation, but pulverized granite is not a soil. From whence, 

 then, did vegetation spring ? From the water and the air. 

 This vegetation fed the fishes ; both increased in quantity and 

 numl)cr, grew and died for countless ages; their remains, 

 mingled with decomposed rocks, gradually settled down and 

 became laminated beds of rock; these rocks are our sUite beds, 

 and the slate is found, by analysis, to be crowded with vegeta- 

 bles in type like tlie kelp along our shores. Here, then, imbed- 

 ded in the rock and kept for ages, is a fertilizing agent, and 

 now^ wherever slate rock abounds, is found a good grain grow- 

 ing soil. After this, we have another paleozoic or early animal 

 age, and this in its turn deposited some twenty thousand feet of 



