people are ever in conflict with the elements of Nature, the land
has been reclaimed by human effort from "the multitudinous waves of
the sea." The streams that once spread over the land or hid
themselves in quicksands and thickets are made to flow in channels
and form a network of watery highways for commerce and the
fertilization of the soil; and where formerly lagoons and morasses
found a home, there are now pleasant homesteads, great cities, and
beautiful villages. The Anglo-Saxon race, which is now and has been
for centuries the most vigorous and progressive in the world, has
always had an insatiable hunger for the earth, and a love for a life
in the fields by stream or by roadside. Everywhere we find the
highest type of civilization where man has gained the mastery of
Nature by the work of his hands. The home of such a civilization is
usually found where forests have been removed, and the wild
vegetation of primitive times has been expelled to make room for the
thousand and one productions of modern cultivation; where hillsides
and mountain-cliffs have been festooned with vines and made to
blossom like the rose; where watercourses have been made highways
for trade and utilized for purposes of manufacture; and where gloomy
morasses and damp lowlands have been dried up and made fertile and
habitable by drainage and cultivation.

As close contact with Nature is necessary for the making of nations,
so her teachings are essential for the largest expansion of the
human mind. All the great teachers of the race have found in Nature
the germs of the thoughts which have widened the bounds of human
knowledge "with the process of the suns." "Speak to the earth, and
it will teach thee," was the basis of Job's philosophy. When David
wanted light and assistance, he lifted up his eyes unto the hills,
from whence came his help. Plato taught in the consecrated groves of
the Academy, and Aristotle in the pleasant fields of Nymphaeeum or in
the shady walks of the Lyceum. Christ taught his disciples to heed
the teachings of Nature, and he sought strength and inspiration in
the wilderness and the mountains. Wordsworth's library was in his
house, but his study was out of doors. But why enumerate, when the
entire intellectual history of our race demonstrates that every
invention or thought which has extended man's mental vision and
knowledge has been evolved from the discovery of some hitherto
hidden law of the material world, or from