Excerpt from The Natural History of the Farm: A Guide to the Practical Study of the Sources of Our Living in Wild NatureThis is a book on the sources of agriculture. Some there may be who, deeply immersed in the technicalities of modern agricultural theory and practice, have forgotten what the sources are; but they are very plain. Food and shelter and clothing are obtained now, in the main, as in the days of the patriarchs. Few materials of livelihood have been either added or eliminated. The same great groups of animals furnish us esh and milk and wool; the same plant groups furnish us cereals, fruits and roots, cordage and fibres and staves. The beasts browsed and bred and played, the plants sprang up and owered and fruited, then as now. We have destroyed many to make room for a chosen few. We have selected the best of these, and by tillage and care of them we have enlarged their product and greatly increased our sustenance, but we have not changed the nature or the sources of it.

To see, as well as we may, what these things were like as they came to us from the hand of nature is the chief object of this course.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.