tent, with flint-headed arrow, to slay a red deer ; the woman 

 must till the field and be back in good season with a bundle 

 of firewood to boil the venison which her lord may eat while 

 she dresses the hide with a stone scraper. To her the duty 

 of gathering, quartering and drying the wild apples for winter 

 use ; their fragments have been found — prototypes of apple 

 sauce ! She must bring in the grain from the small clearings 

 and store it safely in the lake dwelling, under the eye of its 

 master, who sits lazily chipping a pebble, whereof he will 

 fashion, by some weeks of labor, a spear-head. That woman 

 wrought better than she knew ! While perchance her thoughts 

 were only on her barbarian finery — her bronze bracelets and 

 hair-pins — she was founding an ever-glorious reputation as the 

 discoverer of agriculture. It passes my comprehension that 

 writers on woman's rights and woman's superiority have not 

 earlier hit on this capital fact — woman was the discoverer of 

 agriculture. The classic nations recognized it. Ceres of the 

 Romans, Mysia of the Greeks, was not a god, but a goddess, 

 who taught the uses of corn. On the eve of her festival the 

 women drove out of the temple men and dogs, shut the 

 doors, and had a good time by themselves. Alas, genius 

 lives on unconscious of itself! Woman planted and garnered 

 all through the last of the stone period and beginning of that 

 of bronze, unconscious that her praises would be sung, ages, 

 afterwards, by the Norfolk County Agricultural Society. 

 When she quartered and dried those sour wild apples, did she 

 dream of pomological clubs .'' Did she suppose it would ever 

 be possible to propagate three hundred varieties of pears .'* 

 There is encouragement to be drawn from such late recogni- 

 tion of genius. Perhaps we — without knowing it — are 

 doing something very remarkable which will only be found 

 out several thousand years hence. How delightful to feel that 

 several thousand years hence we shall be fully appreciated ! 



