200 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



conscious of our ignorance when we have occasion 

 to address the wearers by name. ' Talking makes a 

 ready man, reading an exact man/ says the old pro- 

 verb. That laying out of a subject in detail which 

 talking requires, clothing it in simple and intelligible 

 language yet illustrated with analogies and metaphor, 

 suited to the individual addressed, is an exercise in 

 itself susceptible of such improvement that one is 

 sometimes tempted to ask, whether Language owes 

 more to Thought, or thought to language. 



But this was not all. In the conversations that 

 ensued with Mr. Greening, derived from my original 

 promise to him to put this question of Steam-culti- 

 vation into plain English, I soon felt that it is one 

 thing to see a matter as plain as a pike-staff before 

 your own eyes, and to put it into language very simple 

 to your own mind prepared to understand it, and a 

 very different thing to make it intelligible to those 

 who have never given any express attention to it 

 before. For the sake of the importance of the sub- 

 ject, I will try to restate the whole question ; drop- 

 ping, for the purpose of continuity, the dialogue form 

 in which the subject was by frequent and useful ob- 

 jections on his part made to dcvclope itself. 



Before the discovery of Steam-power, and its appli- 



