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The War against Agriculture. 
[July, 
II. THE WAR AGAINST AGRICULTURE. 
By An Old Technologist. 
S AM about to discuss a startling, and, from a British 
point of view, a decidedly unwelcome subject, — the 
attempts now being made to substitute artificial 
manufactured articles for the produce of the fields, the 
plantations, and the woodlands. I will at once admit that 
the title I have chosen is open to objections, since the move- 
ment which I am to describe aims in some cases at super- 
seding tropical or sub-tropical products by matters the 
growth of cold climates. But if I had said “ War against 
Tropical Agriculture ” I should have fallen into another 
error, since one of the principal victims to the movement in 
question has been an important crop, which but a few years 
ago was widely grown in France and Holland. However, 
in these days the title of a book or a treatise is not always 
designed to throw any very clear light upon its subject, as 
witness Mr. Ruskin’s “ Sheepfolds.” What I am intending 
to describe will appear clearly enough below. 
The vegetable and animal products which man obtains by 
agriculture and horticulture arrange themselves into two 
fairly natural classes. There are, on the one hand, sub- 
stances which we value for the sake of some one principle 
which they contain, and which we are generally able to 
extract and use in a separate condition. This is the case 
with the bulk of medicinal drugs, dye-wares, condiments, 
and perfumes. Thus we value opium substantially for the 
morphia which it contains, Peruvian bark for its quinine and 
analogous alkaloids, the sugar-cane for its sugar, madder- 
root for its alizarine, logwood for its hsematoxyline, the nut 
of the Elais palm for its oil, &c. Human ingenuity has 
long ago sought to obtain these valuable and active prin- 
ciples in a state of purity, which, as they are so-called 
“ chemical individuals,” has generally proved successful. 
With the second class of bodies— such as the grains of 
wheat or barley, the fruits of the pear-tree or the vine, the 
milk of the cow, or the flesh of the ox and the sheep— the 
case is quite different. Here there is no one principle upon 
which the value of the product depends. There are in such 
substances a number of chemical compounds, mixed not 
indeed mechanically, in the usual sense of the word, but 
