10 



fibre ; it represents the farmer wlio is taught in the school, 

 who reads, and writes, and thinks, who owns his land, and 

 makes the government. And depend upon it, this same hu- 

 man creature who has dragged the plough, and held the 

 plough, and driven the oxen, will not rest content until he 

 puts steam into the yoke, seats himself on the plough's back, 

 :and ploughs the earth at his ease. 



The mower of our day is the happy type of an age amelio- 

 rated by mechanical art. The portraiture of Time tiiat fancy 

 gives us is out of date. Keep the hour-glass. We cannot get 

 rid of that. But picture him no longer, as the gaunt old rnan 

 who has worn the flesh from off his bones, in cutting swaths 

 with an old-fashioned scythe, but rather as the well-condi- 

 tioned farmer, mounted upon his cjiariot-machine, driving his 

 team afield through the falling grass, to the ringing music of 

 the clipping blades. 



Labor-saving machinery alone, however, cannot insure a 

 true progress in agriculture. That involves many elements ; 

 unlike the mechanical and manufacturing arts, the product of 

 agriculture is not a fabricated, but a natural one. It is a living 

 plant. Art here can only aid the vital organic force. It may 

 improve the species by mixture and by culture, it may multi- 

 ply the crop, but it cannot construct a plant out of its con- 

 stituent elements. The principles of vegetable growth upon 

 which agriculture depends are amOng the subtlest, most veiled, 

 and intricate of the operations of nature. They lie in the 

 shadowy region that borders upon the thick impenetrable dark- 

 ness that shrouds the mystery of life. That region, however, 

 has been explored, and the exploration has disclosed for the 

 first time in the history of the race, intelligible principles of 

 farming that inspire the hope of an agriculture progressive 

 and productive almost without limit. The objection does not 

 now apply which Lord Bacon brought against the works on 

 agriculture to which he had access A large collection of 

 them, which he owned, he caused to be piled up in the court- 

 yard and bct on fire ; because said he, " In all these books, I 



