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that will produce abundantly, and to bring every product to the 

 highest standard of excellence. Here he must enter a field of 

 higher research than the mechanical inventor can ever occupy ; 

 a field requiring the keenest intellect and the most accurately 

 trained powers of observation. Chemistry and the laws of animal 

 and vegetable life are the vast subjects that claim his study now, 

 and will do so while the world stands. In these two fields are his 

 discoveries to be made ; every new discovery will increase the 

 quantity or quality of the product, and thus every year shall the 

 farmer's labor be utilized by the more abundant return received. 

 And in the very law of plant and animal development have 

 been given the means of continued utilization of the farmer's toil. 

 To many species, especially to those most useful to man, has been 

 given the characteristic of appearing under different forms known 

 as varieties. So that in nearly all of our cultivated plants and 

 domesticated animals, there is the possibility of securing choicer 

 kinds than have ever yet been known. It is for us to learn all 

 the conditions by which the most desirable kinds are secured, and 

 to be ever on the alert to preserve them when they appear, that 

 our labor may be turned to the best advantage. What vast 

 changes for the better have been wrought in New England within 

 the last twenty-five years ! I need not spend time to recount the 

 changes in stock and fruit which have been so marked. And may 

 we not hope in this line alone that for the next twenty-five years 

 such improvements shall be made that one-fifth more value shall 

 he received for the same labor than now ? If so, here alone we 

 have an important element in human progress, an important con- 

 dition for the advance of civilization. Leisure will be gained, not 

 by stinting ourselves in the necessaries or luxuries of life, but be- 

 cause less labor is demanded to secure abundance. This grand 

 law of animal and plant variation, which some have fancied to be 

 without limit, a sort of indefinite unfolding of one specific form 

 into another, is here seen to have a special relation to the pro- 

 gress of the race, a relation so specific that if we recognize a Cre- 

 ative intelligence any where, we must recognize it in the produc- 

 tion of varieties, not only in fitting animals and plants to the 

 world, but in their relation to man. He may now have the best 

 kind known, but the next year Wilder may produce a more beau- 



