_Transmutation in production._—Men have found that two metals, tin and copper, melted together produce brass, different in qualities from either. Farmers have for many centuries contrived, by keeping nature’s forces under control in the wheat field, to combine certain elements of the soil, including its moisture, into grain. The single seed has multiplied a hundredfold through being placed in favorable conditions, with the raw materials at hand in the fertile soil. The process of maintaining animals with suitable food for the production of milk or flesh is similar. The combination of flour, water, salt and yeast, by heat, first mild and then intense, into a loaf of bread is a good illustration of a change of qualities by rearrangement of the elements of a substance. It is sometimes called transmutation, and comes the nearest possible to creation of material things. The chemist’s laboratory exists for making such new combinations, and many of the arts produce materials, like steel, which would not exist without such combination. But many have seen in the art of agriculture a most prominent illustration of transmuting coarser elements into products adapted to human wants for food, shelter and adornment. All such work, however, is done by bringing objects and forces into such contact that chemical or vital changes will take place while we wait. _Production extended._—In all these three directions, or in any combination of them, transporting, transforming and transmuting materials, men seek the production of a supply for meeting anticipated wants, and so contribute directly or indirectly to welfare. No one way of producing what men need, where they need it, and when they need it, has any superior claim to the name production. All are making the material yield up welfare to the one who needs it, and produce wealth just so far as their services are necessary in bringing the welfare. If ever any step in the process becomes useless, it ceases to be productive of wealth and becomes waste. The inventive powers of mankind are always at work to shorten the processes and hasten the advantages of production. Men study the minutest workings of nature to find the conditions under which she does her part of the work. The application of such minute knowledge is a chief part of every art. This is also the object of science; for, as Guizot says, “It only began to have a well defined existence when it confined itself to seeking the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’ of nature’s workings.” This purpose sustains in the United States more than fifty agricultural experiment stations, united in a great organization, to find how the natural forces used by farmers do their work.