XVIII. 

 'TALPA' LOQUITUR. 



AMONG the various experiences which the much 

 more social Agriculture of the last twenty years has 

 brought, (for a great change has come over us in 

 that particular since well never mind how long 

 ago I was going to say, ) there is none which has 

 struck me more than that part of its philosophy 

 which consists in the operation of mind upon mind. 

 That of ' mind upon matter ' is not a very new sub- 

 ject: we see it every day, and hear of it too, till 

 it is something tiresome : just now we are on a 

 different theme, and a less trodden : * mind upon 

 mind ' is our point at present, and perhaps the more 

 important of the two, after all. I was going to say 

 that in a pretty long and intimate experience of a 

 rather curious soil to deal with, and to which never 

 did man, horse, or implement deny the epithet 

 ' stiff,' I too, like them, have had my own dumb 

 reflections, and not the least emphatic of these 

 have grown out of the everyday phenomena of 

 mind acting upon mind. You tell a man something 



