ONE OF the time-honored subjects in the farmer's conversation is the weather. It is always a bad season for crops. "The like of this hasn't been known for a generation." •'Uncommon unseasonable weather." "Too much rain." "Dreadful dry spell we're having," and so on through all the dismal year. The weather explains all the farmer's failures. The successes, of course, are due entirely to the farmers' skill and industry - in spite of the weather. The gardener is less doleful about the weather and seems to view the changing seasons with far more composure. It is not clear, at first-sight, why there should be this difference between the farmer and gardener. Both depend upon crops raised in the open air, both depend on rain and sunshine, dewy nights and warm growing days. One is celebrated for his little wail about " dreadful late season," or " the uncommon dry spell of weather." The other has not really very much to say about it and goes right on tending to his little patch as if the weather was of very small consequence.

The weather is of vital importance to both farmer and gardener. Both must have sunshine and rain, warmth and even cool, dry nights to ripen the crops. May it not be that the gardener can teach the farmer a lesson ? May it not be true that the garden is more independent of the weather than the field ? The quickest way to get at this matter is to examine the methods of the farm and garden in regard to so common a matter as the rain. A field crop of corn is left to get such water as the clouds, once called '• the wandering water-pots of the sky," may supply. A bed of choice strawberries for the family is practically independent of the clouds, for they can be easily supplied with water from the well, the street mains or the old barrel under the spout. In regard to the rain such small crops are then in a purely artificial climate. As far as the clouds are concerned, the gardener makes his own climate and gets up a little shower whenever he thinks the crops need a wetting. It is becoming more and more general in gardens to supply water to the crops whenever needed, and a wind-mill, water tank, pipes and hose are regarded as part of the essential machinery of a first-class florist's or market gardener's establishment.

In the rainless districts of the far west, and in California, artificial irrigation upon a gigantic scale is already making whole counties independent of the rain. In this sense parts of California are already enjoying an artificial climate. Ultimately, no doubt, all farming will be quite independent of the rain-fall. Improved machinery, cheap power and cheap pumps and pipes will make it possible to supply water at will to large crops of corn, oats, grass or wheat, precisely as water is now supplied to gardens and orchards. We may not look for this at once, yet it is plain that it is coming, and to-day no commercial market garden or florist's place can afford to go without the best appliances for supplying water to the out-door crops. There is rain enough in the year. The point is to save January storm water for use in August droughts. The business of raising vegetables for city markets is simply a manufacture, and some day it will be conducted on manufacturing principles. This will mean absolute independence of the rainfall, and a complete control of all the water supplied to the crops.

When we come to the matter of sunshine and the temperature it seems as if we were practically helpless and at the mercy of the climate. We plant our seed, and while we can supply water when needed, we cannot cause the temperature to rise or fall a single degree. This is not quite true, for the moment we put a few heads of lettuce under a hotbed sash, we have placed them in a purely artificial climate, where we are very largely independent of the heat of the sun, and need not care particularly for cold winds or warm.

Glass we have had for a long time. Greenhouses have been used for more than a hundred years, and yet we are only beginning to understand how essential glass is going to be to both the farmer and gardener. We feed a cow for three objects: to keep her warm, which means to keep her alive ; to cause her to give milk in abundance, and to gain flesh. The food is largely used by the animal to keep her warm. If she stands in a cold, draughty barn and is put out in a windy, open field on a cold day, just so much more food must be consumed as fuel to keep her warm, and just so much less goes to supply milk and flesh. The same cow in a glass-roofed structure artificially warmed would chew her cud in comfortable content, and devote the force obtained from her breakfast to milk and fat. The idea of forcing cows under glass may seem just a little amusing at first glance, yet it is founded on both science and common sense, and we shall live to see it done. We already do it for poultry. Why not for cattle ? The mere shelter of a glass roof exposed to the sun will give a summer temperature to any reasonably tight building whenever the sun shines.

Cows under such a glass roof would simply be in a summer temperature, and it would be difficult to prove that the cows would not enjoy it, and enjoying June weather in January would respond in more milk and more flesh.

In the matter of plants it is evident that the use of glass is to become of more and more value. We sometimes think glass is only for the rich, who want Black Hamburgs, or the florists who want flowers out of season. The market gardener already uses glass for his early crops, his lettuce and radish, and to forward his young tomato plants. Glass gives us complete control of a climate - not the climate, but an artificial climate. By means of steam and hot water we are enabled to convey the heat of a fire to a distance. It becomes possible with the aid of glass and our present systems of heating to have the heat resulting from flame, without the products of combustion that result from flame. It would seem as if in the future the entire business of raising plants would be in greater or less degree controlled by the use of glass and heat. May it not be possible to transform gardening from a handicraft to a manufacture ? If capital can be applied to use machinery in making shoes, why may it not be employed to manufacture crops in artificial climates, and very largely by the aid of machinery ? A few years ago it was thought that only a hen could brood over eggs. To-day we do all her work in an incubator, which is practically by machinery.

Chickens are even fed by machinery - why not, then, cabbages, beets or rhubarb ? We are too apt to regard a plant as something too valuable to destroy for its product. Florists have learned better. Once they saved their rose vines year after year in their greenhouses. To-day they force young plants into flower, get a crop and throw them away. The crop is the thing, and not the plant.

These ideas are suggestions for the future. We have yet to learn how much one acre will produce, because we are subjects to the caprice of our climate. The gardening of the future will use artificial climates to produce crops far exceeding anything we have yet seen. Gardeners will manufacture crops, and then, with capital combined with machinery and science, we shall see the new gardening that will produce vast quantities of food at lower prices and a higher profit than now.

Charles Barnard.