70 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



I cannot deny that there are such. I have read of many, and 

 met some of them and studied their peculiarities. They are 

 uniformly men of strong native intellect, which they have culti- 

 vated in the school of nature, that was established long before 

 colleges and seminaries were thought of. That they are men 

 of science no one will deny who tries to fathom the depths of 

 their knowledge. Moses, the greatest lawyer and military 

 commander the world has ever seen, had no such training as 

 is furnished by Harvard and West Point ; but whoever supposes 

 that he did not pick up all the wisdom to be found in Egypt 

 and in the land of Midian has not rightly read the record. 

 We are expressly told he was learned in all the wisdom of the 

 Egyptians. He had no book-learning, for books were unknown ; 

 but he doubtless in his boyhood studied the parchment and 

 papyrus manuscripts, the works of man, of which there were 

 wonderful displays in the land of his nativity, and the works 

 of God, of which there are still more wonderful displays every- 

 where ; and when driven to Midian he still manifested the 

 same inquisitive power. When tending the flocks of Jethro, 

 his father-in-law, he had ample opportunity to study the great 

 volume of nature, in which is contained more wisdom than in 

 all the parchments, scrolls and books man has ever written. 

 His inquisitive disposition was manifested when " the angel of 

 God appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a 

 bush, and behold the bush burned with fire and the bush was 

 not consumed." Moses did not run away in fear, nor sink to 

 the earth paralyzed with astonishment, but calmly said, "I will 

 now turn aside and see this great sight why the bush is not 

 burnt." Such research will make a man scientific without the 

 aid of schools and books. If Moses had been a farmer he would 

 doubtless have been a scientific one. I care not where the 

 knowledge is acquired, whether in the laboratory of the chemist 

 or in the greater laboratory of nature. The main thing for the 

 farmer, and for every man indeed, is to learn to think, and not 

 to perform his labor in a certain routine, as a horse goes round 

 in a bark-mill. Man is not a machine. Our heads were made 

 purposely to think, to mould and direct inert matter as cir- 

 cumstances may demand. When once the habit is acquired of 

 thinking continuously on one subject till its bearings are well 

 understood, knowledge must accumulate, and is stowed away 



