16 GARDENING FOE YOUNG AND OLD. 



England, when the late J. J. Mechi, who had for many 

 years recommended high farming, stated that, notwith- 

 standing the low price of agricultural products, he was 

 at that time picking several acres of peas for the Lon- 

 don market, and he found the crop a very profitable one. 

 Dr. Gilbert, one of the ablest agricultural chemists of 

 the world, called out: "But, Mr. Mechi, this is not 

 farming, it is market gardening." Mr. Mechi, though 

 always ready, made no reply. He seemed to think that 

 the argument was unanswerable, and he let the case go 

 by default. But not so the coming generation of farm 

 boys and I hope of English boys also. What does it 

 matter whether you harvest your peas dry or pick them 

 green ? What does ifc matter whether you raise cab- 

 bages, corn or carrots, and other roots, to be fed out on 

 the farm to animals, or to be sold in market to our fellow 

 citizens, who can not grow them for themselves ? 



The advocates of high farming make a mistake. Nei- 

 ther England nor New England will ever raise all the 

 wheat required by its population. Even the great State 

 of New York, I hope, will not long continue to raise on 

 its own soil all the wheat it annually consumes. Com- 

 merce is the feature of the age, and wheat is carried ten 

 thousand miles to market. Cheap bread is what the 

 world wants, and what the world wants, the world will 

 get. Cheap wheat can never be furnished by high farm- 

 ing. It must and will be grown largely on land manured 

 only by nature. There may be places in which wheat 

 can be profitably grown, where many of the constituents 

 of the plant must be applied to the soil, just as there are 

 places where we can profitably use chemical processes for 

 the production of ice. As a rule, however, nature and 

 commerce will furnish ice cheaper than even modern 

 science can manufacture it. We shall have two kinds of 

 farming. One will consist largely in the production of 

 wheat, corn, oats, barley, cotton, sugar and rice. The 



