Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and JapanKing, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Science
Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
King, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Agriculture -- China; Agriculture -- Japan; Agriculture -- Korea
In still another instance a man was growing Irish potatoes to market
when yet small. He had enriched his soil; he would apply water if
the rains were not timely and sufficient, and had fed the plants. He
had planted in rows only twelve to fourteen inches apart with a hill
every eight inches in the row. The vines stood strong, straight,
fourteen inches high and as even as a trimmed hedge. The leaves and
stems were turgid, the deepest green and as prime and glossy as a
prize steer. So close were the plants that there was leaf surface to
intercept the sunshine falling on every square inch of the patch.
There were no potato beetles and we saw no signs of injury but the
gardener was scanning the patch with the eye of a robin. He spied
the slightest first drooping of leaves in a stem; went after the
difficulty and brought and placed in our hand a cutworm, a young
tuber the size of a marble and a stem cut half off, which he was
willing to sacrifice because of our evident interest. But the two
friends who had met were held apart by the babel of tongues.
Nothing is costing the world more; has made so many enemies, and has
so much hindered the forming of friendships as the inability to
fully understand; hence the dove that brings world peace must fly on
the wings of a common language, and the bright star in the east is
world commerce, rising on rapidly developing railway and steamship
lines, heralded and directed by electric communication. With world
commerce must come mutual confidence and friendship requiring a full
understanding and therefore a common tongue. Then world peace will
be permanently assured. It is coming inevitably and faster than we
think. Once this desired end is seriously sought, the carrying of
three generations of children through the public schools where the
world language is taught together with the mother tongue, and the
passing of the parents and grandparents, would effect the change.
The important point regarding these Far East people, to which
attention should be directed, is that effective thinking, clear and
strong, prevails among the farmers who have fed and are still
feeding the dense populations from the products of their limited
areas. This is further indicated in the universal and extensive use
of plant ashes derived from fuel grown upon cultivated fields and
upon the adjacent hill and mountain lands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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