tain points, but man may sink below the brute, or rise to the 

 very heavens. What, then, has been the modifying influence 

 by which savages have risen to civilization ? — what has made 

 the difference between the Digger Indian of California and the 

 people of New England? — between the Hottentot and the 

 European ? There is a natural difference of races, but beyond 

 that agriculture has been the first modifying cause. Civiliza- 

 tion must begin in breaking up the sod, planting the seed, and 

 providing better food. It may be unpoetical but it is not 

 unphilosophical to say, that man may be improved physically 

 by improved and abundant food, as much as the strawberries 

 that grow in your gardens, or the cattle in your barns. It is 

 impossible for a man to be good or great with a badly organ- 

 ized brain and a weak or diseased body, and those depend in 

 a measure upon the food we eat. If the Digger Indian sub- 

 sists on worms and roots he will partake of their nature. If 

 the barbarian feeds upon that which is watery and fibrous, hav- 

 ing but little nutriment, he will have no spare vitality, and the 

 brain will remain an undeveloped germ. It is as true of man 

 as of any living thing on the earth, or over or under the earth, 

 that for a full development of his powers he needs abundant 

 and generous food. Our highest type of manhood is in the 

 well fed nobility of Great Britain ; physically they have no 

 equals in the world ; and we never think of wise and great 

 men only as answering the historical description of Plato, 

 whose body and mind were well developed. So we think of 

 all the world's worthies down to our "Washington, and Frank- 

 lin and Webster. For this perfection of manhood agriculture 

 changes the poisonous South American root to the Chenango 

 or the Jackson white potato ; it gives the Baldwin for the crab 

 apple, and the Bartlett for the choke pear ; it transforms the 

 small flinty and almost unnutritious Rocky Mountain corn to 

 the golden staple of New England, and the bitter grass seed, 

 which is the parent of the wheat, to the staff of life ; while 

 the diminutive sheep and hard sided oxen it has doubled in 

 weight and juiciness and value, in the last two centmies. 



