PRACTICAL PAPERS — VEGETABLE MATTER, ETC . 359 
forms by forces working under the direction of well defined and 
fixed natural laws. 
Immanuel Kent, the distinguished philosopher of the last cen¬ 
tury, said, “ Give me matter and I will build the world.” That is, 
% 
his mind had been so thoroughly trained in the observance of 
natural phenomena, that he was enabled to recognize clearly the 
fact, that the forces of nature were so accurately adjusted, and the 
laws governing them so universal and unerring, that it required 
only the material ( matter) to bring about results such as we find in 
the world as it is. 
Kent might have gone farther than this, and said, give me 
matter, and I will make those varied forms that beautify the earth’s 
crust and her surface; for they, too, are the result of forces , con¬ 
ditions , and laws found within the field of observation, and within 
the reach of the human mind. 
And if he had been a farmer, and understood the relation and 
adaptation of those natural forces and the laws governing them, to 
the vegetable kingdom, he nr'ght have said, give me matter and I 
will fill your barns with the fruits of the earth, for agriculture is 
nothing more than a process by which provisions for man and 
beast are manufactured out of elementary particles of matter by 
physical forces. 
In this department of nature, that is, the agricultural, man 
is especially interested. The world was built long before man 
made his appearance on it. The inorganic forms of matter stood 
then as now, the ornaments of nature’s museum, to represent her 
works in the past And it is his privilege now to learn only how 
nature accomplished these- things, and to admire the methods of 
her working. But in this new, this organic department, where 
the forces of nature are arranged with reference to manufacturing 
matter into organized substances, man is allowed, indeed he is 
called upon, to become a co-worker with nature; not to produce 
new worlds, but to produce organized forms of matter to meet the 
demands of animated materialisms, and to ornament and beautify 
this world as his home. 
In this cooperative system of nature, it may be important, it is 
true, that man should understand the principles of nature’s ma¬ 
chinery, or the forces of the vegetable kingdom. But over these, 
