4 The Great World's Farm 



derived from an Anglo-Saxon verb which means "to 

 supply with food," and certainly, in this sense, the lands 

 which man still leaves to nature's laborers have every claim 

 to be considered as one vast farm; for they grow, many 

 of them, the most luxuriant crops, and they feed more live- 

 stock than can be numbered. 



Man grows, for himself and his live-stock, a few vege- 

 tables — about two hundred and fifty species — and he has 

 adopted, and partly domesticated, about two hundred ani- 

 mals. But on the great natural farm things are done on 

 a very much grander scale. Here the species of crops 

 grown number not much less than a hundred and forty 

 thousand; and the different species of live-stock amount 

 to some millions. 



With so many animals to feed, and so many crops to 

 grow, nature's farm-laborers do not allow of "deserts"; 

 and wherever there is an unoccupied surface, they hasten 

 to take possession, and if possible, sow something upon 

 it, if it be but a lichen. They sow even the little heaps 

 of dust which collect in sheltered nooks, on the leads of 

 the church-tower, on walls, in the angles of masonry, and 

 make them bear at least a blade or two of grass, and 

 often quite a crop of various green things. Generally 

 speaking, it is only by recent lava-fields, and the loftiest, 

 bleakest peaks of rock, that these energetic laborers are 

 baffled, and then it is only for a time. 



Over and over again, as Mr. Ball says, he was told in 

 different parts of the world that such and such a spot 

 was entirely devoid of vegetation; or in other words, a 

 desert; and over and over again he found it to be quite 

 a mistake. On the so-called "bare" peaks of the Dolo- 

 mite Mountains he always found a "fair number" of plants 



