PREFACE. 
This is a book on the sources of agriculture. Some there 
may be who, deeply immersed in the technicalities of modern 
agricultural theory and practice, have forgotten what the 
sources are; but they are very plain. Food and shelter and 
clothing are obtained now, in the main, as in the days of the 
patriarchs. Few materials of livelihood have been either 
added or eliminated. The same great groups of animals 
furnish us flesh and milk and wool; the same plant groups 
furnish us cereals, fruits and roots, cordage and fibres and 
staves. The beasts browsed and bred and played, the 
plants sprang up and flowered and fruited, thenasnow. We 
have destroyed many to make room for a chosen few. We 
have selected the best of these, and by tillage and care of them 
we have enlarged their product and greatly increased our 
sustenance, but we have not changed the nature or the 
sources of it. Tosee, as well as we may, what these things 
were like as they came to us from the hand of nature is the 
chief object of this course. 
A series of studies for the entire year is offered in the 
following pages. Each deals with a different phase of the 
life of the farm. In order to make each one pedagogically 
practical, a definite program of work is outlined. In order 
to insure that the student shall have something to show for 
his time, a definite form of record is suggested for each 
practical exercise. In order to encourage spontaneity, a 
number of individual exercises are included which the student 
may pursue independently. The studies here offered are 
those that have proved most useful, or that are most typical, 
or that best illustrate field-work methods. There may be 
enough work in some of them for more than a single field trip: 
