THE MANSE GARDEN. 183 



Yet in all this, while we find nothing to blame, 

 we will find much to admire. The Creator, who 

 abhors idols, will not suffer one plant to be the sole 

 dependence of rational creatures ; and if they will so 

 depend for their life they must be poor and sickly 

 and see their idol broken before their eyes. Not 

 that any plant must cease to grow. Turnip, carrot, 

 and red clover, still live : so will the potato : but 

 its cultivation to excess will not do; it must be con- 

 tent with a more limited field, and allow of other 

 things, in fair proportion, agreeably at once to the 

 constitution of man and of the ground on which he 

 lives. 



The moral part of the Almighty's scheme ought 

 not to be overlooked. It is not the feeding of man's 

 body alone, but the exercise of man's mind, that the 

 Deity promotes by his beneficent arrangements. 

 When men first begin to cultivate the ground they 

 are weak and ignorant like infants at the breast, and 

 the earth gives her abundance solicited by little la- 

 bour or skill. But there is given to the soil a law 

 of decreasing fertility, which must be met by an in- 

 crease of science ; and for this attainment men have 

 time whilst they are nourished by an easy bounty, 

 and must proceed, by new inventions of art, to com- 

 pensate the diminishing fertility of nature. But 

 there is another law of decrease similar to this, and 

 leading to the like effects there is the decreasing 

 aptitude of the plant to the soil, in consequence both 

 of less favour shown by the ground and of more 

 worms fed by the plant; and which, being at first 

 dependants, become at length so numerous as to as- 

 sume the attitude of foes and the power of destroyers. 



