7 6 



as successive creations, and man has been getting better and bet- 

 ter, and woman has been getting better and better, higher and 

 higher, in their physical, mental and in their god-like nature. 



To return to water ; what is nature doing ? She is constantly 

 pumping up from the surface of the oceans, seas, lakes and 

 streams, and carrying it all over the earth this very rain that 

 falls, and this very snow that is falling to-night, to go down the 

 hill sides and over the prairies, and moisten the soil and give it 

 fertility, and through it and by it we live. 



Water has a very powerful influence with relation to a pro- 

 duction of the dairy; that is milk. When we get milk in the 

 cities, we don't know how much chalk; we don't know how 

 much oleo emulsion, has been put into the milk to give it body 

 and consistency; but we know when we get milk directly from 

 the cow that it is the only perfect food, ready prepared, that has 

 been given to man by nature. 



It is the only food that contains all the constituents of life, 

 exactly in the proper proportion, to build up what the scientific 

 men call adipose and muscle, and brain, and every part of the 

 animal body. We cannot assimilate from the food we eat any- 

 thing that is not entirely soluble in water and in the juices of 

 the body. A horse will drink perhaps ten to twenty pounds of 

 water a day, the good old mother cow 'requires from seventy to 

 eighty and one hundred pounds a day, and she must have it, or 

 she cannot give down these great messes of rich milk that we 

 sometimes hear of. 



Water is the most beneficient as well as the most wonderful 

 thing in nature. Without it the grass could not grow, the 

 trees — the great oaks of the forest — could not spread their 

 branches until three or four or five cords of wood can be pre- 

 pared from a single tree. It is the carbon contained that makes 

 the wood valuable. 



Now what is carbon ? Charcoal is nearly pure carbon, the 

 diamond is pure carbon. Carbon can only be burned under 

 peculiar circumstances, and then portions of it passes off in a 

 gas which constitutes nourishment to plants. Thus the law of 



