PRINTING AND AGRICULTURE. 287 



importance in their relations to agriculture and the commu- 

 nity, the farmer not only supplies freight for these carriers, but 

 also food for the merchants and men who by their money and 

 muscle construct them, and the same for both those who navi- 

 gate and work the water-craft, and those who run the land 

 conveyance, whether on road or rail. 



So of the manufactures. While the farmer is dependent 

 upon the manufacturers' arts for the cloth he needs to wear, 

 and to sundry other arts for the articles needful for domestic 

 use, the artisans who furnish him with these things are depend- 

 ent on the cotton and wool growers, and the forest and min- 

 eral land holders, as the case may be, not only for the raw 

 material to run through their varied processes, but, as in the 

 other case, for the cereals, roots, bulbs, and meats on which 

 to subsist, and wood and coal to carry on the arts of cooking 

 for them the year round, and to keep them warm in winter. 



So we may say of the arts and mechanisms which furnish 

 the very implements of husbandry, on the one hand, and the 

 rural supplies needful for cunning workmen, on the other. 

 The exercise of the arts and trades which provide axes, hoes, 

 shovels, forks, ploughs and harrows, mowing-machines and 

 raking-machines, and other needful implements of husbandry, 

 is indeed indispensable in this age, particularly in these 

 higher latitudes, to the successful processes of agriculture ; 

 while the artisan and mechanic, whether the master workman 

 or the journeyman, but for the farmer who both pays them for 

 their wares and sells them his produce, would be minus their 

 bread, butter, beef, and cheese, so needful for the inner man, 

 to say nothing of wool and hides to be converted into cloth- 

 ing and shoes for the covering of their households. Much 

 more might be added here, in following out the detail — dress, 

 travel, pleasure, education, attending cattle-shows, etc., all 

 come in. 



But we pass to notice briefly another of the arts as related, 

 interchangeably, to agriculture ; namely, the art of printing. 

 The writings of ancient times on such material as was then at 

 hand, — prepared animals' skins and barks of certain trees, — 

 and the hieroglyphics and other inscriptions on walls, metals, 

 and rocks, although a slow and imperfect way of disseminat- 

 ing light and truth, were, for the transmission of historic facts, 



