In the Address the paragraph is concluded as follows:—
"Water, the daily miracle—a substance as explosive as gunpowder—the electric force contained in a drop of water being equal in amount to that which is discharged from a thunder-cloud. I quote from the exact Faraday."
Then follows a passage about the farmer's doubtful competence to control these majestic forces:—
"His servants are sometimes too strong for him. His tools are too sharp. But this inequality finds its remedy in practice. Experience gradually teaches him, and he is thoughtful. The farmer hates innovation; he hates the hoe till he tries it, preferring to scratch with a stick; he will walk till he has tried the railway car; but the oldest fogy among us, now that the Atlantic Cable is laid to London, will not send a man to swim across with his letter in his mouth."
Page 147, note 1. It may be interesting to see this passage in the garb in which it was presented to the Middlesex farmers.
"Plant a fruit-tree by the roadside and it will not produce, although it receives many hints, from projected stones and sticks, that fruit is desired to come down, and though it has been swallowed crude into the robust bowels of small boys. But draw a low fence about it to keep out the cow and pig, and for thirty, forty, perhaps a hundred years, it ripens peacefully its delicate fruit,—every pear, every nectarine, every cluster of grapes inviting you to have its picture taken, before being sent to the Horticultural Fair."
Apropos of orchards, I will give here two allusions to apples from the journals:—
1848. "I have planted a Pumpkin-sweeting near my summer house,—I believe out of agreeable recollections of that fruit in my childhood at Newton. It grew in Mr. Greenough's pasture, and I thought it solid sunshine.
