ON MANUFACTURES. 143

what the bounty of nature spontaneously affords us;
as fruits, corn, marble. __

flen. But there is a great deal of trouble with
corm; you have often made me take notice how much
pains it costs the farmer to plough his ground, and
put the seed m the earth, and keep it clean from
weeds,

a. Very true; but the farmer does not make the
corn; he only prepares for it a proper soil and situa-
tion, and removes every hindrance arising from the
hardness of the ground, or the neighbourhood of
other plants, which might obstruct the secret and
wonderful process of vegetation ; but with the vegeta-
tion itself he has nothing to do. It is not Ais hand
that draws out the slender fibres of the root, pushes
up the green stalk, and, by degrees, the spiky ear;
swells the grain, and embrowns it with that rich tinge
of tawny russet, which informs the husbandman it is
time to put m_ his sickle: all this operation is per-
formed without his care or even knowledge.

fien. Now, then, I understand; corn is a produc-
tion, and bread a manufacture.

fc. Bread 1s certainly, in strictness of speech, a
manufacture; but we do not in general apply the
term to anything in which the original material is so
little changed. If we wanted to speak of bread
philcsophically, we should say, it is a preparation of
corn.

Hen. Is sugar a manufacture ?

Ha. No, for the same reason. Besides which, I do
not recollect the term being appled to any article of
food; I suppose from an idea that food 1s of too perish-
able a nature, and generally obtained by a process too
simple to deserve the name. We say, theretore, sugar-
works, oil-mills, chocolate-works; we do not say a
beer-manufactory, but a brewery; but this is only
a nicety of language ; for, properly, all those are manu-
factories, if there be much of art and curiosity in tiv
process.