Percolation

“ Agriculture is the only hope," said Percy. "The soil is the breast of Mother Earth, from which her children must always draw their nourishment, or perish. It is the 'last thing,' as you truly said. Aside from hunting and fishing, there is no source of food except the soil, and, when this is insufficient for the people who produce it in the country, God pity the poor people who live in the cities. ”

“ When the season comes and the soil is ready, the farmer knows he must sow the seed, or he cannot hope to reap a harvest. So it is with the moulds: to the conditions for growth there must be added the germs of life, or no mould will be produced. ”

“ The day is that of the harvest. And the harvest is the end of the world. Let both grow together until the harvest. And in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn. The harvest is the end of the world: the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burnt in the fire: so shall it be in the end of the world. The son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity! ”

“ A hoard, collected from the simple productions of nature, or a herd of cattle, are, in every rude nation, the first species of wealth. The circumstances of the soil, and the climate, determine whether the inhabitant shall apply himself chiefly to agriculture or pasture ”

“ Last of all the various tribes of vegetables are to be enumerated amongst the inferior orders of animals. Of these the anthers and stigmas have already been shewn to possess some organs of sense, to be nourished by honey, and to have the power of generation like insects, and have thence been announced amongst the animal kingdom in Sect. XIII. and to these must be added the buds and bulbs which constitute the viviparous offspring of vegetation. The former I suppose to be beholden to a single living filament for their seminal or amatorial procreation ”

“ These all are united by a common life; a common bond of sensation and of nutrition connects the whole of the individuals into one compound being. A single Polype, inhabiting a solitary cell, began the colony, which has grown by the continual formation of new individuals on every side, as buds grow into branches, which bud again and form a tree.
Some idea of the populousness of such a community may be gathered from the following calculations. I took a piece from my specimen, on which I carefully marked out an area of one eighth of an inch square. ”

“ But, as a rule, the population of Dads subsist upon the dried figs and other scanty produce of their gardens, which are poor enough little fields, well irrigated certainly, but with inferior soil and scanty products. ”

“ Centuries of cultivation have converted much of the land into rich, productive soil, but a glance at a recently reclaimed field shows one the difficulties with which the original cultivator has to contend, difficulties that would surely daunt a less stout-hearted race. ”

“ Before we trespass on the domains of arboriculture, horticulture, or agriculture, under which heads the cultivation of useful or ornamental plants divides itself, some consideration is required of those plants which, quasi-wild, are usually included in accounts of the vegetation under the head of aliens, denizens, colonists, and so forth. ”

“ In the pastoral stage he takes of the produce of nature, providing little or nothing himself. In the agricultural stage he manipulates the soil and subdues it, he harnesses the wind and the streams to grind his corn, and to water his land ”

“ As we sail down the river in this approaching harvest-season we are in continual wonder at the fertility of the land; a fertility on the slightest cultivation, the shallowest plowing, and without fertilization. ”

“ The mescal harvest occurs in the season of new life and growth, when the call from the wild is strong in the blood, and like a class of children—for they are but grown-up children—they pour out into the wilds. ”

“ I say again, I wish those that have been so long plowing with their ill-matcht pair of Creatures, and sowing the Field with divers Kinds of Seeds, would, or could be prevailed upon, to stand still a little and be quieted, and look back and round about the Field, and see what sort of Plowing they have made, and what Sort of Seed they have sown, and what Sort of Grain is grown up ”

“ The same heredity here, the same environment, the same opportunities—yet how different the result! The farmer has tended and gathered many a crop from the old place since they were boys, but has been blind and deaf to all that has there yielded such a harvest to the other. ”

“ Population And Emigration.
Both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms every species derives from nature a reproductive faculty beyond the demand for merely keeping up its stock; the seed of a single plant is sufficient to multiply it one hundred or a thousand fold. The animal offspring is never limited to the number of its parents. ”

“ As one advances in life one gets to know the sowers of this harvest of tares, and to separate them from those of the wheat crops, without fouling one’s barn with the results of their labour; the effect of it being merely amusing at last. ”

“ Every system of culture first means preparation ; it next becomes fostering care ; and then it results in harvesting and storing for future cultivation. In all culture, therefore* are implied these three factors of breaking the glebe, sowing the seed and growing the harvest, and reaping it for future use. ”

“ Nature elsewhere rich in hints to the gardener and the farmer is not silent here. A lesson plainly taught in all this apparatus for the dispersal of seeds is that the more various the planting the fuller the harvest. Now that from the wheat fields comes a cry of disappearing gains, it is time to heed the story told in the unbroken prairie that diversity in sowing means wealth in reaping. ”

“ The same laws which regulate the perfection of plants, the growth of corn, the fleetness of the greyhound, and the symmetry of the horse, govern the physical and mental culture of man. In the vegetable kingdom, the agriculturalist is aware that the success of his crops depends upon the condition of what he sows, and the fertility of the soil wherein it is sown. ”

“ During this age agriculture makes its appearance. The growth of the family idea is incompatible with the roving and unsettled life of the hunter. Gradually the practices of settled habitations and the cultivation of the soil become established. ”

“ It is just the progress-driven plough of God,
Tearing up the well-worn custom-bounded sod;
Shaping out each old tradition-trodden track
Into furrows, fertile furrows, rich and black.
Oh, what harvests they will yield
When they widen to a field.
They will widen, they will broaden, day by day,
As the Progress-driven plough keeps on its way. ”

“ Through the long grass by the brook, which for years had made the Perkins' farm the best in the village* the water- rats scurried on secret, silent errands, and a single dandelion glowed like a fallen planet upon a tiny green hum- mock close to the amber water. ”

“ Thence to a pastoral life, more thoughtfully sparing the beasts of the field, treating them as 'plant' for the conversion of fodder into a regular supply of animal food, and by selection improving the efficiency of the said plant. ”

“ Now in every family of five there is an average of at least two capable husbandmen, who have probably not more than a few roods of land, the yield of which would perhaps be not more than a hundred piculs. ”

“ The husbandman has in the course of years, by drainage and manuring, to bring his ground into a fertile state; in the autumn he must plough, harrow, and sow, for his next year's crop; must subsequently hoe and weed, keep out cattle, and scare away birds; when harvest comes, must adapt the mode and time of getting in his produce to the weather and the labour market ”

“ The art of breeding has now made such progress, that man can often at discretion produce certain peculiarities in cultivated species 155 of animals and plants. To practised gardeners and farmers, you may give distinct commissions, and say, for example, I wish to have this species of plant with this or that colour, and with this or that shape. Where breeding has reached the perfection which it has attained in England, gardeners and farmers are frequently able to furnish to order the desired result within a definite period, that is, at the end of a number of generations. ”

“ All parts of a plantation, owing in some places to the different ages of the plants, in others to the variety in the soil and its productive powers, in others to slopes or to aspect, do not yield leaf equally, that is, flush does not follow flush with equal rapidity. ”

“ In the operation of grafting, a similar portion of a plant community of one variety is given a fitting place for growth in another, and by its growth and multiplication of phytons a new colony is established. With this view a tree or shrub may form an individual part of a landscape, but not in the same sense that one may speak of a cow or a horse. ”

“ We improve our favourite plants and animals—and how few they are—gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. ”

“ Cattle wandered shoulders deep in the rich grass, and fruit of all kinds was to be had for the picking. The population was strangely mixed. Men had drifted here from all parts of the world, sometimes with their families, sometimes without them. ”

“ Presently he said to them which sat next to him, "Say ye not, there are yet four months and then cometh the harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest. ”

“ Considering the fertility of the extensive marshes they inhabit, and which are adapted, on either bank, to every description of cultivation, as well as to the rearing of cattle, they may be said to be poor and needy. ”

“ In both cases man became skilled in harvesting long before he understood anything of the art of cultivation. Primitive man roamed from place to place in the wake of the annual wave of harvest, gathering wild crops of grain, berries and fruits. ”

“ When one sows his field with one kind, Even though he makes two granaries,he gives one corner. If he sows two species, even though he makes one granary, He gives two corners. If he sows his field with two species of wheat, And makes one granary,he gives one corner, But if two granaries, two corners. ”

“ We have, in this enumeration, a series of groups of strata, each of which, speaking in a general way, has its own population of animals and plants, and is separated, by the peculiarities of these, from the groups below and above it. Each group may, in a general manner, be considered as a separate creation of animal and vegetable forms—creatures which have lived and died, as the races now existing upon the earth live and die ”

“ The distribution of species has been referred by some to specific centres of creation around which the plants and animals have spread, without reference to physical conditions. Although centres of creation may be admitted, these centres themselves have been determined by the physical fitness of each [Pg 378] centre to the conditions of the creation, and in like manner the migration of tribes is solely due to these physical forces we have been considering. In every zone we find that vegetable organization is peculiarly fitted for the considerations by which it is surrounded. ”

“ In plants, many of our double flowers, and some fruits, have lost the power of producing seed, and the race can thus be continued only by means of cuttings or grafts. This peculiar character of domestic productions distinguishes them broadly from wild species and varieties, which, as will be seen by and by, are necessarily adapted in every part of their organisation to the conditions under which they have to live. ”

“ Where this cultivation exists, no matter how barren the soil or ungenial the clime, there comfort and competence will abound; for it is the intellectual and moral condition of the cultivator that impoverishes the soil or makes it teem with abundance. ”

“ All that the people know, or rather imagine, is that somehow they themselves, their cattle, and their crops are mysteriously bound up with their divine king, so that according as he is well or ill the community is healthy or sickly, the flocks and herds thrive or languish with disease, and the fields yield an abundant or a scanty harvest. ”

“ And now let us begin again at the art of managing herds. You have probably heard of the fish-preserves in the Nile and in the ponds of the Great King, and of the nurseries of geese and cranes in Thessaly. These suggest a new division into the rearing or management of land-herds and of water-herds:—I need not say with which the king is concerned. And land-herds may be divided into walking and flying; and every idiot knows that the political animal is a pedestrian. ”

“ Fields of heavy land were all ploughed up, but before the farmer could harrow them and prepare a fine tilth for the seeds, the clods were baked as hard as iron, so hard that it was impossible to do anything with them, and the fields carried no crops at all. ”

“ As already pointed out, we have, in prepastoral stages, as among the Bushmen, cases where scarcity of wild food necessitates parting into very small groups; and clearly when, instead of game and vermin to be caught, cattle have to be fed, the distribution of pasturage, here in larger, there in smaller oases, will determine the numbers of animals, and consequently of human beings, which can keep together. ”