The Farmer's Pedigree

As my sons and I were mowing a field of heavy grain, we began, for the sake of coolness, to cut in the face of the wind. This makes bad work, but the mowing was hot and we tried several swaths across the field before we changed and mowed, as we should have done in the first place, with the wind at our backs. And there flashed across my mind the antiquity of the rule, so familiar to every farmer: ‘Always mow with the wind at your back.’ For it was laid down, centuries ago, by that grand old Greek farmer and military commander, Xenophon. ‘For it is annoying, both to the eyes and the hands,’ explains this old-time authority, ‘to reap in the face of the stalks and ears.’

Present-day farmers do not read Xenophon to any great extent, nor, for that matter, any of the old classical authorities on agriculture: Cato, to whom Pliny refers as ‘ a man of consummate authority on all practical matters,’ and ‘ deserving of high honor as the first agriculturist of his time’; Varro, who, at the age of eighty, wrote one of the most complete agricultural treatises that was ever written, full of the practical knowledge of a man who had spent a lifetime in the study and practice of agriculture; or Virgil, who, although a man of letters and the greatest poet of his age, was also a farmer, and did not deem agriculture a subject unworthy of the best efforts of his genius. I fear that the ‘up-to-date’ farmer — especially if he have a smattering of the sciences and can talk with some degree of near-correctness about nitrates and phosphates and bacteria — has little respect for the classics, and would regard it as the sheerest waste of time to dig into the musty pages of these world-old authorities. And yet he might do so to advantage. Not one farmer in ten thousand knows as much about horses as Xenophon did; and Cato and Varro could give almost any of them points in land-management, that are well worth the knowing, and show a greater intimacy with the subject than they themselves possess.

But it is not as text-books or as works of reference that these old authorities are of especial value; few, in these days, even of their admirers, would think of using them thus. It is that they contain a certain charm, hard to define and yet easily perceived, that is lacking in the treatises of modern times — a certain flavor of the fields and woods and honey-bees that runs, an unconscious accompaniment, through all their practical teachings. Then, too, their point of view, as a rule, was essentially right, and the honor that they paid to agriculture seems to have always come from a clear recognition of all that it really stands for. ‘When agriculture flourishes,’ observes Xenophon, ‘all other pursuits are in full vigor; but when the ground is forced to lie barren other occupations are almost stopped, as well by land as by sea.’

Of these old farmers, although all are full of interest, Xenophon appeals to me the most. None of the others, it seems to me, has put into his writings quite so much heart — so much of the spirit of the man who knew the land and loved his work, and to whom horses and dogs and sheep and cattle were as familiar as his own children.

And then, too, his fine sense, which runs like a thread of gold through all his writings, of agriculture as ‘the most fitting employment for men of honorable birth’! No thoughtful man, from his day to ours, could affirm otherwise, however many there may be who are constrained to other callings. For the heritage of good birth unquestionably imposes obligations; and the management of land should not be left to those who do not realize its high mission or the service that is rendered by the man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before.

To me, holding as the first article of my agricultural faith the moral obligation that attaches to the ownership of the soil, and, as one of no less importance, the necessity of physical labor to the permanent well-being of mind and body, Xenophon speaks across the intervening ages with the intimacy, the sympathetic quality, of an old friend.

‘ It is less creditable,’ says he, ‘ for a man to remain in the house than to attend to things out of doors. The pursuit of agriculture is at once a means of enjoyment and of increasing resources; and it is also an exercise for the body, such as to strengthen it for discharging the duties that become a man of honorable birth. For, though it offers blessings in the greatest plenty, it does not permit us to take them in idleness, but requires us to accustom ourselves to endure the colds of winter and the heats of summer; to those whom it exercises in manual labor it gives an increase of strength, and in such as only oversee the cultivation of it, it produces a manly vigor by requiring them to rise early in the morning and forcing them to move about with activity.’

Then follows an observation that shows, even if we did not know it from other sources, how dearly this old Greek farmer loved his horses and dogs. ‘Again, farming offers the greatest convenience for keeping horses; and it also affords some incitement to exertion in hunting over the land, supplying facilities for the keeping of dogs and supporting beasts of game. The horses and dogs, moreover, which are kept by farming benefit the farm in return, the horse by carrying his master early in the morning to the scene of his labors and furnishing him the means of returning late; the dogs by preventing wild beasts from destroying the fruits of the earth and the cattle and by affording security, even in the most solitary places.’ In this readiness to find a reason for keeping animals whose chief excuse is to give pleasure and which, except in limited numbers, are rarely necessary on a farm, Xenophon shows a very human weakness, which at once proclaims him of the same kind as ourselves, and brings him nearer. For my own part, I have almost always had more horses on my farm than I needed, and, if questioned about it, have usually found myself ready with some excellent reason why I should keep them.

But if Xenophon loved horses and dogs, he was none the less a practical farmer, and he gives important suggestions for the selection of good farm land, and for tillage, fertilizing, and the multitude of matters upon which a good farmer should be informed. Almost all of his views are singularly sound and shrewd, and as applicable now as in his day. He also addresses himself to those who are not versed in agriculture but contemplate taking it up, and he makes it very clear that farming, to be successful, must be learned, like any other business, — a truth which should be selfevident but which, strangely enough, is seldom realized outside the farmer’s ranks. It would be to the advantage of all who think that farming can be taken up without any special training to read what Xenophon has to say on the subject. ‘Agriculture,’says he, ‘is an art that renders those who understand it rich; but leaves those who do not understand it, however much they may labor in it, to live in poverty.’ The term ‘goods,’ he tells us, may be defined as ‘something that is serviceable to the owner. The same things, therefore, are goods to him who knows how to make use of them, but not goods to him who does not know. Land certainly cannot be called a part of a man’s goods if, instead of supporting him, it brings him nothing but hunger.’ It may be doubted if the matter were ever more truthfully presented.

Xenophon does not take up the management of horses in the Economics, but devotes a separate book to it; and on this subject he displays a knowledge that leaves all the other classical writers far behind. A great deal of the horse-treatise, if translated literally and printed in a modern magazine or agricultural paper, might easily pass for the work of a present-day writer. There are some few matters in the treatise with which, as a horseman, I could hardly agree; but, in the main, it is sound, and it remains one of the best treatises on horses and horsemanship that was ever written.

Like the Economics, the horsetreatise is very little read to-day. But, as to its real value and its adaptability to present-day needs, I may add that horsemanship is an art that is never new and never old. We may breed different types of horses, and we may harness and use them differently; but the points of excellence that combine to form the most perfect horse are the same in one age as in another. Xenophon, it is true, attached some importance to points that we care much less about now, — as, for instance, a smooth, round back that is‘easy to sit upon,’ which was owing to the fact that the Greeks did not use saddles but only a cloth, fastened to the horse’s body by a surcingle; but these are minor matters. He knew the points of a good horse, and he knew horse-nature. And he had, too, that delight in horses that is only found in the true horseman, the man who loves as well as knows them. ‘It is upon horses,’says he, ‘that gods and heroes are painted riding; and men who are able to manage them skillfully are regarded as deserving of admiration. So extremely beautiful and admirable and noble a sight is a horse that bears himself superbly, that he fills the gaze of all who see him, both young and old; no one, indeed, leaves him or is tired of contemplating him so long as he continues to display his magnificent attitudes.’

Xenophon lived long on his farm, and when an old man still rode horseback and personally superintended its details. His personality is of a kind that all lovers of agriculture like to contemplate: an enthusiastic and successful farmer, an expert horseman, a writer who strove to instruct and help others in what he considered the highest of all sciences. It is no wonder that he lived to be old, for he understood and practiced the things that promote longevity. ‘Health,’ says he, ‘is a surer attendant on a man when, after he has taken sufficient to eat, he works it off by proper exercise.’ And we also find these sentences in the Economics: —

‘ I take my morning meal eating just so much as to pass the day neither empty nor over-full; and I never dine till I have put myself into a perspiration by some military or agricultural exercise.’

Cato’s trealise, De Re Rustica, is much less gracefully written than Xenophon’s books. Its author devotes little time to observations upon agriculture as a calling, but lays down rules for its practical conduct, in sharp, incisive paragraphs in which no words are wasted. He was evidently a very different kind of man from Xenophon, and I fancy would have sneered at the latter’s horses and dogs, and his fondness for riding horseback and for hunting. It is very easy, after reading his treatise, to imagine him saying that Xenophon might put in his time more profitably. He has none of the humor which appears so often in Varro’s works; nor do the more graceful features of the business, which appealed so strongly to Virgil, seem to have interested him. He is nothing if not practical: he is economical to a marked degree, and there is so much about him that reminds one of a shrewd, forehanded old New England country deacon that one might almost suppose the latter had had him for a model. The value that he sets on frugality is shown in scores of places in his treatise. Thus, in stating the amount of clothing that a farmer should allow his farmhands, he says that ‘a tunic of certain value’ (whatever that may be) ‘and a coarse cloak every other year’ is enough. This would not seem a very heavy allowance, but, even with this, he proposes to take no chance of loss, for he adds, ‘As often as you give a tunic or coarse cloak, first take the old one, as centones can be made from it.' The cento was a garment of patchwork, worn by slaves. Is there not here a suggestion of the patchwork quilt of New England, by which all stray scraps of cloth were to be saved and turned to account?

Reminders of New England ways and habits of thought are, in fact, constantly recurring in the treatise: the author’s exceeding thrift, and his intolerance of what our forefathers called ‘vain amusements,’ are conspicuous features. His chapter on the duties of a housewife is especially characteristic. ‘Take care that the housewife does her duty. Let her live in awe of you. Let her have as little intimacy as may be with the neighboring women, and let her not receive them in the family. Let her not go to entertainments, nor be fond of visiting. Let her not perform religious duties, but let her know that the master does religious offices for all the family.’ This last is a masterstroke, showing that even in religious matters there may be economy and thrift, for surely it would be a waste of time for each member to do individually what can be done in a few minutes by one for all. ‘Let her take care,’ he continues, ‘always to have victuals in readiness for you and the family. Let her keep a stock of hens that there may be a supply of eggs. Let her have dried peas, dried grapes and pears and quinces in casks carefully laid up every year.’ The picture called up is strongly suggestive of the New England ‘preserve closet,’and the attic with its strings of dried apples. How could our forefathers have refrained from reading Cato!

The mention of the attic reminds me that Cato was likewise not behindhand in the matter of herbs and home remedies. He does not mention hardhack, thoroughwort nor catnip, but I am sure he must have had them. ‘Brassica’ seems to have been his special pet. Concerning this plant, I am unable to speak more definitely than that it is of the botanical family to which cabbage belongs; and, as there are several varieties, it is not always clear (at least, to me) which one he means. ‘The brassica,’ says he, ‘is a general medicine: it is salutary to the bowels, and a decoction of it is salubrious in all cases.’ And he shamelessly adds that ‘ if you wish to drink plentifully at a feast and to sup freely, eat as much as you wish of it, raw, with vinegar, before supper, and when you have supped eat some more of it: it will promote digestion and enable you to drink as much as you please.’ This is hardly what one would expect from so austere a soul as Cato: but it is at least practical — and Cato was practical above all things. Possibly he thought it would be selfish to withhold so valuable a piece of knowledge.

He mentions a number of other things for which brassica is useful, and adds that it can always be used with entire safety — which certainly is a good recommendation. In many of his prescriptions there is a vein of strong sense; for ‘an overloaded stomach,’ for instance, he prescribes his pet remedy, brassica, but also recommends that the patient go to bed without supper and, on arising in the morning, eat no breakfast but ‘ walk for four hours, and then go about his usual occupations.’ There is little doubt that this would effect a cure. He also advises that in cases of fever the patient be allowed to drink what water he wants, in which, though an agriculturist and not a physician, he shows more intelligence than the trained doctors of a later period. On the whole, however, I do not think I should care to take his remedies. Few, even of the most nauseous, are prescribed in any stinted quantity: one — which he strongly advises ‘when a cathartic is needed ’ — contains eleven ingredients, ‘any one of which’ he observes, complacently, ‘ is of a purgative quality, and the concoction will physic the patient with efficacy.’ I should think it might.

But let no one suppose that Cato was a mere writer on household rules and home remedies. Despite his weakness for doctoring, it is in the practical work of farm and garden and stable that he is at his best. He is a master of the art that he essays to teach. No single subject connected with the agriculture of his day escapes him, and he begins at the beginning by telling how to choose a farm. He recommends that it be within easy distance of good markets, and that it be situated on a river or a good road. There is no guess-work in his talk, and the many present-day farmers who cannot tell, with any degree of accuracy, the cost of raising a crop or keeping a cow or sheep, might learn a valuable lesson from this old Roman, who calculated to a nicety the cost of everything, and tells just how much of fodder and grain and litter is required to carry an ox or sheep through the winter. Next to his thrift, this accuracy is, perhaps, the most noteworthy thing in the treatise. Thoroughness, too, he always insists upon. ‘ What is good tillage?’ he asks. ‘First, to plough thoroughly: second, to plough: third, to manure.’ In the original this seems still more concise and epigrammatic. ‘Primum, bene arare: secundum, arare: tertium, stercorare.’ The other part of tillage, he adds, is ‘ to have good seed, to sow plentifully,’— which makes one wonder whether the farmers of that time had that strange proneness to scanty seeding that so many have to-day, —’and to take up all the weeds that may grow during the season.’ It would be impossible to express the matter any better or in fewer words.

Cato realized, as fully as Xenophon, that agriculture must be thoroughly learned before it can be made profitable. He characteristically observes that the farmer, to obtain the knowledge he needs, ‘ must not only think about planting, but he must do it,’—thus emphasizing the importance of that actual experience in the field without which no man, however much he may study farming in books, can ever succeed. He even expresses the opinion that it is necessary for the farmer to have been familiar with agriculture ‘from his earliest infancy’ — a flying start, surely. But in this extreme opinion he differs radically from Xenophon, who points out clearly that a man by diligent study and practice can, at any time of life, become a good farmer,— a statement that I think no intelligent agriculturist would be inclined to dispute. Both books bespeak eloquently the personality of their writers, and the extreme and caustic opinion expressed by Cato is exactly what the reader would expect.

What strikes any reader of these old treatises is the thoroughness, the attention to minute details, with which every agricultural operation was carried out. No one who reads the careful and explicit directions for the planting of crops, the planting, grafting, and pruning of fruit trees, the care of grape-vines, and the breeding and management of live stock, could, by any possibility, suppose that the farming of those days was crude. Indeed, many of the rules tally exactly with our present-day practice. If I take, for instance, Cato’s directions for planting an asparagus bed, and compare them with those of Peter Henderson (whose work on gardening is the commonly accepted standard among market-gardeners), I find no difference worth the mentioning. Henderson, indeed, says that the plants should be set nine inches apart in the row, while Cato says six; and Henderson states how far apart the rows should be, while Cato simply says they should be far enough apart to leave room to cultivate the ground between them. But a man could follow either authority and succeed equally well.

In scores of other instances the rules laid down by the classical authorities are strikingly familiar. The agricultural journals, every year, urge upon farmers the desirability of having some green forage to feed to their stock in time of drouth, so as to leave intact the hay that is stored up for winter. Cato also recommends the feeding of ‘green leaves’ in the same way, and says, ‘Keep the dry provender which you have laid up for winter and think how long a winter it may be.’ The best modern authorities recommend the mowing of grass for hay before it has gone to seed. Cato says, ‘Mow your hay in the proper season and be cautious that you do not mow it too late. Cut it before the seed is ripe.’ Even in the more unusual departments of farming, which in many English and American works on agriculture are wholly omitted, we find the old Roman entirely at home. Take, for instance, the French rule for cramming fowls for fattening (I quote from Tegetmeir’s standard work), which is to make patons, or pellets, of buckwheat or barley flour and always to dip these pellets in water when fed. ‘The dipping in water is essential,’ says the writer; and adds that ‘ the chicken should have two meals in twenty-four hours, twelve hours apart,’ Cato, writing on the same subject, says, ‘Make pellets of flour or barley meal; dip them in water; administer them. Cram them twice a day.’ The French authority says the amount fed is to be ‘gradually increased till it reaches twelve or fifteen pellets.’ Cato’s rule is, ‘Add a little gradually every day. Judge of what is sufficient from the chicken’s voracity.’

Cato’s treatise is worth reading, if only for the closer acquaintance it gives us with the writer. It throws strong light on his character, his way of looking at things, his prejudices, even his superstitions — for he was by no means free from the latter. There was a great deal to admire in this old farmer who was so thorough and painstaking in his work; and if, in many ways, he was the prototype of the New England deacon, there was often much to admire in the deacon, too.

The treatise of Marcus Terentius Varro, who was a friend of Cicero’s and reckoned one of the most able and learned men of his time, is, on the whole, a more complete work than Cato’s, taking up the various subjects at greater length and confining itself more closely to strictly agricultural matters. The author states, by way of preface, that he has reached the age of eighty, that he realizes that man’s life is but a bubble, and that he is writing down his instructions in farming for the benefit of his wife, Fundania, that she may have less trouble in managing the farm after he is dead.

Varro seems to have had none of Cato’s austerity; indeed, he writes in a very cheerful vein, and often indulges in pleasantries; nor had he the great Censor’s fondness for household recipes and loathsome remedies for coughs, colds, and bowel troubles. He believes that such things have no place in an agricultural treatise, and indulges in a rather sharp thrust at Cato for including them in his book. Referring to the trivialities and superfluous matter to be found in the works of certain writers on agriculture, whom he evidently considers of little account, he adds, ‘As if, indeed, such things are not to be found in other writers! Are there not in the book of the celebrated Cato, which is published concerning agriculture, such things as these: how you are to make cakes, and in what manner you are to salt, flitches of bacon? Not to mention that other prescription of his that if one wishes to indulge in overeating and drinking at an entertainment he must eat some leaves of brassica steeped in vinegar!’

Like both Xenophon and Cato, Varro points out that farming must be learned before it can be profitably engaged in; and the conscientiousness of all these classical authorities who,while praising agriculture as a calling, are very careful not to lure any one into it who has not had sufficient training, cannot be too highly praised. “The two things most essential in agriculture,’ he says, ‘are, whether the profit will be adequate to the expense and labor; and whether the situation is healthy or not. If either of these is not attainable and any one wishes to farm, he is insane and is to be put under the custody of his relations. For no one, of sound mind, ought to wish to incur expenses in farming if he sees that there can be no recompense; or, if there be a probability of a recompense, if he sees that destruction is likely to ensue from pestilence.’

He also makes it clear that to make a farm pay, the kind of farming that is carried on must be adapted to its situation. A florist, for instance, he says, is not likely to succeed on a farm that is too remote from the class of people who buy flowers, ‘the business of raising violets and roses’ being profitable only in the near neighborhood of large cities. He tells us, too, how, even on a good farm, a man may fail through bad judgment and the failure to grasp the true proportion of things, — as for instance, in erecting too large or too small a farmstead. ‘For we build great houses at considerable expense, and we keep them up with greater,’ says he; ‘and when they are less than the farm requires, the produce is usually wasted.’

As in the other treatises, the importance of diligence, close economy, and so managing that every feature of the farm shall be turned to account, is always urged. Indeed, in the latter respect, he sometimes fairly out-Catos Cato — as, for instance, when he is speaking of the love-affairs that are always taking place on a farm between the farm-hands and the maids in the kitchen — a matter that, from his day to ours, has been a source of more or less annoyance to every farmer who employs much help. To provide for the possibility of a serious outcome of any of these amours, he advises that only strong, healthy young women be employed, who would be likely to produce vigorous offspring. This, from a staid old gentleman of eighty who, as he tells us, realizes that man’s life is but a bubble, and who is writing for his wife, because he expects so soon to leave her, is perhaps hardly what we should expect. The old pagan cheerfully adds, however, that ‘such a pastoral Venus has usually no higher ambition,’ and explains that farm-hands who are born and raised on the farm are generally more satisfactory than those obtained from elsewhere.

Varro lived up to his privileges as an octogenarian by lamenting, in good, orthodox style, the decay of the good old times. ‘Our illustrious ancestors,’ says he, ‘preferred those who lived in the country to the inhabitants of cities, and not without reason. But families have now crept into towns, having taken leave of the scythe and the plough, and choose to be in the theatre and circus, rather than in the field and vineyard.’ Has not this a familiar ring? I think it ought to make some of our present-day advocates of‘back to the soil’ blush for their lack of originality.

But if Varro thus lamented, he was, on the whole, a cheerful and sociable old gentleman, and his book is full of allusions to calls from neighboring farmers who dropped in to discuss various farm topics with him, and is, in fact, largely made up of these discussions. And there is scarcely a page that has not a touch of his dry humor. In his discussion of the profits of fishculture, he says, ‘When our friend Q. Hortensius had fish-ponds built at great expense I have been frequently with him at his villa and I have always known him to send to Puteoli to buy fish for supper.’ And, as if this were not a sufficient commentary, he further observes that Hortensius not only had to buy fish for his table, but often had to lay in a large supply of small fish to feed to those he was raising.

Hortensius was evidently a man who farmed for pleasure rather than profit, and of this kind of farming we already know Varro’s opinion. He also recounts characteristically the exploit of Lucullus, another Roman who farmed for pleasure, and was a great bird and poultry fancier. Lucullus, who was an original and inventive soul, had a dining-room constructed in his aviary ‘where he might sup in style and see some birds dressed and served up while others were flying about the windows.’ Apparently he did not find dining in a hen-house as satisfactory as he expected, ‘For the birds flying about the windows,’ observed Varro, ‘do not please the eye so much as the disagreeable smell of the place overpowers and offends the nose.’

Virgil’s agricultural poem — the Georgics — takes up the same points as the other treatises. Although, as we would expect in a poet, he sometimes branches off in picturesque descriptions of rural scenes and events, it is nevertheless evident that he was a thoroughgoing farmer, and one likes to think of him in his villa, looking out at his colts in their pasture as he wrote the famous line in the Æneid, —

No man could have written that line who did not know something about horses and did not love the soul-stirring music of hoof and wheel. I do not think the Georgics as valuable a book on agriculture as Varro’s treatise, but it shows its author to have been no less well-versed in agricultural knowledge and skill. It is simply that he was poet first, and farmer afterwards.

Now, what are we to learn from these old agriculturists who wrote so conscientiously and painstakingly of the art they loved? First, perhaps, that agriculture has not advanced as much since their time as the scientific farmer of to-day likes to think it has. For if we go even further back than the Greek and Roman writers we find that the Arabs understood the science of horse-breeding as fully as does any one to-day; and Jacob, when he tended the flocks of Laban in Padanaram, solved a problem which no one who did not understand the principles of heredity and atavism could possibly work out. They teach us, too, how in any old and advanced civilization agriculture comes to hold a higher place, and to be considered one of the most fitting matters for the attention and efforts of men of intelligence and culture.

But none of these, it seems to me, is the chief lesson — namely, that the immutable principles upon which good agriculture depends were first learned, not by chemistry or soil-analyses or laboratory experiments, but by simple experience and observation in the field itself. It is quite probable, for instance, that Jacob knew nothing of chemistry. But he understood the laws of heredity when he bred his ring-streaked and spotted cattle — just as Moses understood them when he said that the result of the sins of the fathers would show in the children to the third and fourth generation. And it is almost certain that Cato could not have told the proportion of ammonia or phosphorus or potash in a given manure, but he could and did tell the kinds of manure best suited to different soils and crops, and I have not found a single instance in which he was in error.

‘The elements of agriculture,’ says Varro, ‘are the same as those of the world: water, earth, air, the sun. These things are to be understood before you sow your seed, which is the origin of vegetation.’ This is in every respect as true to-day as when it was first written. ‘These things are to be understood,’ and they are to be understood practically: the knowledge must be a working one. And the man who, by his own experience and observation, has learned the kind of soil and the kind of manure adapted to a certain crop, and the kind of cultivation necessary to bring it to its greatest perfection (even though he have no knowledge of chemistry or of soilor manure-analyses), has gone a great deal further toward successful agriculture than he who, without this practical training, has all that can be learned in school or laboratory at his tongue’s end.

Nor can science do much more, in many instances, than to explain the principles that are thus practically learned. Let us take, for instance, the effect of manure and tillage on young plants. Liebig tells us (Organic Chemistry) that a young plant derives its nourishment from carbonic acid, which is supplied by the gradual decay of humus in the soil. This decay (and consequent formation of carbonic acid) is, of course, hastened by the presence of oxygen. ‘Humus acts in the same manner in a soil permeable to air as in the air itself,’ says Liebig, ‘and, by loosening the soil which surrounds young plants, we favor the access of air and the formation of carbonic acid; on the other hand, the quantity of [plant] food is diminished by every difficulty which opposes the renewal of air.’

The explanation has never been quite satisfactory to me, but it has long met with a very general acceptance. But many a man who knows nothing of such matters knows the value of manure and the necessity of frequent and thorough tillage. He knows not only that the loosened earth serves as a mulch, to retain the moisture below, but also that in some other way, not so easy to understand, tillage favors the growth of the plant. Cato knew it when he wrote ‘ Primum, bene arare; secundum, arare: tertium, stercorare.’ In other words, chemistry only explains a process that every good farmer already knows is necessary.

But there remain many laws of nature — laws, too, with which all are familiar, and which the trained agriculturist, even more than the ignorant one, is obliged constantly to take into consideration — that science cannot explain. In the breeding of animals, for instance, no one can tell why two animals, of exactly the same blood, and bred under exactly similar conditions, are different. Even twins when, so far as can be discovered the conditions of creation do not vary in the slightest degree, differ both physically and mentally. Darwin points out that this phenomenon has never been made clear; the reason for it seems to be beyond our ken. But the action of the law itself is known and recognized; no horse-breeder expects to raise two horses that are exactly alike, and he knows that, having produced one animal of a marked degree of superiority in any given respect, his ability to produce another is uncertain. The tendency to individual variation seems to be as fixed as the tendency to general similarity. And yet he knows that the tendency to variation is much less in thoroughbred stock than in mongrels; that to breed with any certainty as to result he must confine himself to such stock; and that the older the type — the longer the stream has run in the same channel without contamination or admixture — the greater are his chances of getting the result he desires. And the breeder who, after half a life-time of study and experiment has come to certain conclusions regarding heredity and pre-natal influences and food-values, is confronted by the fact that, after all, he has probably learned nothing that is new; and that Moses and Jacob and the descendants of Ishmael knew the same things three thousand years ago.

Does all this indicate that such things as biology and chemistry, and soiland food-analyses are of no value? By no means. They are both useful and desirable to the student of agriculture. But it teaches us that the great laws upon which good agriculture and successful stock-breeding depend are made evident through phenomena which are open to the perception of all; and that they can be learned by any man who will observe and study and practice,—just as Varro and Xenophon learned them, — without experience in the laboratory or having ever heard of Liebig.

I would not wish to be misunderstood, or to appear to underestimate our agricultural schools and colleges and the good and conscientious work that many of them are doing. But I believe that the tendency of many of our agricultural instructors is to attach too much importance to theoretical knowledge, and too little to the knowledge that comes from a close intimacy with the subject in a purely practical way; as, for instance, the raising of a horse that must go fast and go far to answer his purpose, or a crop that must be large and heavy to have its value exceed the cost of growing it. In other words, that the tendency is to treat agriculture as a science that furnishes an interesting field for study and experiment and research, rather than as a business which must be made to pay a profit.

It was in this latter aspect alone that the classical writers studied agriculture; and therein, I think, lay the reason for the surprising accuracy of many of their conclusions.