contributes the raw material of these great and vital industries,
then incites and works out human suggestions. Thus she trains and
obeys the mind and hand of man, in this grand sphere of development.
Their co-working and its result are just as perceptible in a common
Irish potato as in the most gorgeous dahlia ever exhibited. Not one
farmer in a thousand has ever read the history of that root of
roots, in value to mankind; has ever conceived what a tasteless,
contracted, water-soaked thing it was in its wild and original
condition. Let them read a few chapters of the early history of New
England, and they will see what it was two hundred and fifty years
ago, when the strong-hearted men and women, whom Hooker led to the
banks of the Connecticut, sought for it in the white woods of
winter, scraping away the snow with their frosted fingers. The
largest they found just equalled the Malaga grape in size and
resembled it in complexion. They called it the _ground-nut_, for it
seemed akin to the nuts dropped by the oaks of different names. No
flower that breathes on earth has been made to produce so many
varieties of form, complexion, and name as this homely root. It
would be an interesting and instructive enterprise, to array all the
varieties of this queen of esculent vegetables which Europe and
America could exhibit, face to face with all the varieties which the
dahlia, geranium, pansy, or even the fern has produced, and then see
which has been numerically the most prolific in diversification of
forms and features. It should gratify a better motive than
curiosity to trace back the history of other roots to their
aboriginal condition. Types of the original stock may now be found,
in waste places, in the wild turnip, wild carrot, parsnip, etc.
"Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a
little," it may be truly and gratefully said, these roots,
internetted with the very life-fibres of human sustenance, have been