THE FARMER AND IIIS HOME. 
119 
fertile lands an exhausted waste after a generation or two, but 
of the other kind that takes up the work of the Creator where 
i 
he left-it and carries it forward to a more glorious perfection. 
Many of us now present, will remember the rich and mag¬ 
nificent, though wild beauty of the prairie and openings of this 
country when first the Agriculturist came in to disturb the 
solitude and plant civilization in the wilderness ; and may not 
think it an easy task to add to the original beauty of the scene. 
But the task is yours ; yours is the labor which is to make over 
the whole surface of our land—to plant fields and gardens, fruit 
trees and flowers, shrubs and vines, yours to build and adorn 
dwellings and schools and churches, villages and cities. Yours 
so to cultivate the soil that year by year its productions increase; 
so that year after year the soil shall sustain a larger number 
and an improved race of animals and of men ; so that your sons 
and your sons’ sons shall live in abundance, cultivating an im¬ 
proved soil, with improved knowledge amid all the blessings of 
civilization and education, and not be compelled to fly from an 
impoverished homestead to seek new homes and begin a new 
civilization in some wild, Untrodden wilderness. Such labor 
will be glorified of man and blessed of God,—to such labor you 
are called. 
To bring about such a result as I speak of, no amount of 
physical strength, no amount of mere muscular exertion is suf¬ 
ficient. The mind has to do its share of the work. It requires 
labor, hard labor, to plow and sow, to reap and thresh, to plant 
and to cultivate. And to do this successfully, it requires to be 
done with care and knowledge. All the operations of the farm, 
to make them successful in any high degree, and to any perma¬ 
nent end, require to be done with enlightened knowledge. 
Farming is becoming a science as well as an art, and to its suc¬ 
cessful prosecution in the years to come, must be brought the 
enlightened labor of an educated people. It will not do to fol¬ 
low blindly the methods of our fathers, we must find new ways, 
new machinery, new crops. 
I come now to speak particularly of one thing which it seems 
