THE GREAT WORLD'S FARM SOME ACCOUNT OF NATURE'S CROPS AND HOW THEY ARE GROWN BY SELINA GAYE Author of 'The World's Lumber-Room, WITH A PREFACE BY G. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S. 'The world is one vast garden, bringing forth crops of the most H. DRUMMOND, “Tropical Africa" New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1900 [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED] PREFACE By G. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S. Professor of Botany and Geology in the City of London College. It cannot be too often insisted upon that knowledge, and not ignorance, is the true parent of reverential wonder. Our appreciation of the beauty of a flower is heightened, and not lessened, by the knowledge that each curve in its outline and each spot of colour on its petal has a definite utility in the plant-economy. Our admiration of a landscape is intensified, and not diminished by the thought that hill and dale owe their contour to the excavating power of rain and rivers operating through ages of time, and that the vegetation which clothes them has definite relations to the composition of the soil and to the character of the climate. It has, therefore, been wisely recognised by all our modern authorities on the subject of education, that the study of some of the sciences should occupy an early and an important place in our school curriculum. It may be that those universal favourites, the flowers, which can anywhere be readily obtained, are to be the subject of study; or the innate love of experiment is to be fostered and directed in the chemical laboratory; or, perhaps better still, the physical features of the world around us, of sky and sea, of mountain and river, of crystal and pebble, are to be presented, not Readers of more mature years can hardly fail to find in this volume some facts that are new to them, some suggestions of a wider interpretation of nature or of a more accurate perception of its inter-relations, or some fresh cause for intelligent wonder. If Newton could look on himself as a boy playing with pebbles on the shore of the great unexplored ocean of truth, every student of nature may well recognise that, whatever his years, his experience or his learning, he will remain but a student, and will never have learnt all that nature has to teach. In looking upon nature as a great farm, there is, however, another and a more important lesson than any teaching of accuracy or of admiration. We read of steam-ploughs, of hoeing-machines and mechanical sowing, reaping and threshing machines; but, though much labour may be replaced by automatic processes, the controlling intelligence of the farmer co-ordinates all the operations of the farm to his one end. It is wisely said that 'The undevout astronomer is mad, and Napoleon's tribute to the Higher Power, when he asked the sceptical members of his staff 'Who made all these?' is only the natural testimony of intelligence. Truly those minds are to be pitied that fail to see more than the blind operation of mechanical forces even in the simplest of natural phenomena; but when these phenomena are studied separately, there is undoubtedly a danger that we may fail to see the wood for the trees.' When, however, we contemplate the marvellous co-ordination of all the forces of nature, the balance of vegetable and animal life and their mutual dependence, we must be blind indeed if we refuse to look 'thro' Nature up to Nature's God.' |