NECESSITY OP SUNLIGHT. 223 



effect of light is not confined to the surface. We therefore con- 

 sider it of great importance that a farmer, in selecting sites for 

 his house and barn, should choose a sunny place, and by no 

 means obstruct the sun's rays by shade trees. An open lawn 

 before the house, covered with a velvety turf, is just as orna- 

 mental as a forest, and far more healthful. Under the dense 

 shade of trees moisture lingers a livelong summer's day, and 

 the very shingles decay under its corrupting influence. Much 

 more do the wife and children suffer in their delicate organiza- 

 tions. The yard and stables for the stock should also be on the 

 sunny side of the barn, and the latter should be liberally 

 glazed. A high, dry, well ventilated and thoroughly sun-lighted 

 home should be one of the leading objects with every farmer. 

 We have seen this winter the homes of many of the prairie 

 farmers squatted in the mud, and are fully of the opinion that 

 it requires much good land to compensate for the want of a 

 gravelly knoll on which to locate one's house. The necessity of 

 sunlight for plants is, if possible, even more necessary than for 

 animals. The latter live upon the complicated chemical com- 

 pounds which the vegetable world furnishes, but the vegetables 

 must build up their various parts from the elementary constit- 

 uents. Without sunlight the leaves of plants cannot decompose 

 the carbonic acid of the air, assimilate the carbon and throw out 

 the oxygen, and therefore cannot grow. It is the force of the 

 sunbeam that tears asunder the carbon and oxygen, and 

 gives the former for vegetable and the latter for animal life. 

 Carbon and oxygen are therefore both the result of solar force, 

 and some chemists attribute all force to the sun. " What 

 moves this car ? " said George Stephenson to one of his travelling 

 companions. "The engine, of course," was the reply. "But 

 what moves the engine ? " " Steam — coal," said his companion. 

 " No," said Stephenson, " It is neither steam nor coal, but the 

 sun that made the coal, and is now working through it ! " 



But if the sun is the source of life he is also the destroyer, 

 as his influence is constantly tending to effect change, through- 

 out creation, a constant revolution from death to life, and again . 

 from life to death, the ultimate particles of matter undergoing 

 no change except the change from one form of life to another. 

 Thus viewed, corruption, putrefication and decay are only the 

 transition state from one life to another. The sun is the great 



