142 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



culation, the plants have less vigor and the soil becomes 

 exhausted. 



The spring in my watch is merely what the plant food is 

 in the soil. The spring is a contrivance into which I store 

 my own strength ; the plant food is a convenience into 

 which the sun can store his strength, his energy. And then, 

 when a horse eats a bundle of hay, he is merely transferring 

 into horse-power the power which the sun rolled into that 

 peculiar plant-spring. In that way the sun is doing all the 

 work of the world. A long time ago the sun was shining 

 down on the earth, hotly, vigorously and continuously. 

 He was rolling himself up, year by year and century by 

 century, into plants, — plants that stored his strength with 

 avidity. Then there came great changes in nature, and those 

 big trees and plants, full of the sun's energy, were buried 

 away down deep in the bowels of the earth ; but still they 

 held the sun's strength. Men open mines, they dig up 

 concrete sunshine and energy in the form of coal ; the fur- 

 nace is filled; the magic liberator — fire — is applied ; and 

 as the mighty engine moves, wheels are turned to-day with 

 the energy which the sun wound up in the vegetable kingdom 

 of the earth ages and ages ago. 



The man who furnishes in the soil no plant-food for the 

 young plant keeps the sun idling on his field all the day 

 long. So a man ought to make it his pleasure, as it is his 

 privilege, to harness the old sun every day in his fiirm work, 

 and make it do his will by making it roll its strength into 

 such plants as he wants for his service. Now, a man could 

 never aftbrd to hire half a dozen men on a farm and have 

 them " loaf" all day long, while he is wearing himself out 

 with working. But the man who wears himself out with 

 working and keeps the sun idling all day long is doing 

 a far more foolish thing. So a man should recos^nize that 

 he has the right — that he has the power — to control the 

 sun's working, make it work upon his fields, and thus save 

 himself from the reproach of leaving the best working power 

 in the world idling on his place. The farmer requires skill, 

 he needs knowledge, he must have above all things good 

 judgment, in order that he may fitly control and exercise the 

 power placed at his command. 



