f-preservation? With
what we ordinarily call manufactures, it has, indeed, little connection;
but with the all-essential manufacture--that of food--it is inseparably
connected. As agriculture must conform its methods to the phenomena of
vegetal and animal life, it follows that the science of these phenomena
is the rational basis of agriculture. Various biological truths have
indeed been empirically established and acted upon by farmers, while yet
there has been no conception of them as science; such as that particular
manures are suited to particular plants; that crops of certain kinds
unfit the soil for other crops; that horses cannot do good work on poor
food; that such and such diseases of cattle and sheep are caused by such
and such conditions. These, and the every-day knowledge which the
agriculturist gains by experience respecting the management of plants
and animals, constitute his stock of biological facts; on the largeness
of which greatly depends his success. And as these biological facts,
scanty, indefinite, rudimentary, though they are, aid him so
essentially; judge what must be the value to him of such facts when they
become positive, definite, and exhaustive. Indeed, even now we may see
the benefits that rational biology is conferring on him. The truth that
the production of animal heat implies waste of substance, and that,
therefore, preventing loss of heat prevents the need for extra food--a
purely theoretical conclusion--now guides the fattening of cattle: it is
found that by keeping cattle warm, fodder is saved. Similarly with
respect to variety of food. The experiments of physiologists have shown
that not only is change of diet beneficial, but that digestion is
facilitated by a mixture of ingredients in each meal. The discovery that
a disorder known as "the staggers," of which many thousands of sheep
have died annually, is caused by an entozoon which presses on the brain,
and that if the creature is extracted through the softened place in the
skull which marks its position, the sheep usually recovers, is another
debt which agriculture owes to biology.

Yet one more science have we to note as bearing directly on industrial
success--the Science of Society. Men who daily look at the state of the
money-market glance over prices current; discuss the probable crops of
corn, cotton, sugar, wool, silk; weigh the chances of war; and from
these data decide on their mercantile operations; are students of social