PREFACE.
This is a book on the sources of agriculture. Some there may be who, deeply immersed in the technicalities of modern agricultural theory and practice, have forgotten what the sources are; but they are very plain. Food and shelter and clothing are obtained now, in the main, as in the days of the patriarchs. Few materials of livelihood have been either added or eliminated. The same great groups of animals furnish us flesh and milk and wool; the same plant groups furnish us cereals, fruits and roots, cordage and fibres and staves. The beasts browsed and bred and played, the plants sprang up and flowered and fruited, then as now. We have destroyed many to make room for a chosen few. We have selected the best of these, and by tillage and care of them we have enlarged their product and greatly increased our sustenance, but we have not changed the nature or the sources of it. To see, as well as we may, what these things were like as they came to us from the hand of nature is the chief object of this course.
A series of studies for the entire year is offered in the following pages. Each deals with a different phase of the life of the farm. In order to make each one pedagogically practical, a definite program of work is outlined. In order to insure that the student shall have something to show for his time, a definite form of record is suggested for each practical exercise. In order to encourage spontaneity, a number of individual exercises are included which the student may pursue independently. The studies here offered are those that have proved most useful, or that are most typical, or that best illustrate field-work methods. There may be enough work in some of them for more than a single field trip:
