256 Transactions op the 



tion. But it is dependent upon physical agents, chiefly upon climate 

 and soil, which determine the most important conditions of human wel- 

 fare. 



The first step of progress is the accumulation of ivealth, which in 

 all regions of the earth is created by labor. The moment man pro- 

 duces more than he consumes the law of distribution comes into play, 

 and we see a movement towards an organization of industry. It does 

 not depend upon race. The same Mongolian and Tartar tribes which, 

 wandering over the steppes and barren lands of Central Asia, never 

 emerge from the rudest condition of pastoral life, because they never 

 accumulate, have risen to the highest civilization whenever they have 

 broken through the mountain ranges and descended into more fertile 

 regions. The wild Arab, whom we know best as the Bedouin of the 

 desert, transplanted to Persia or Spain, left noble architectures behind 

 him, and made valuable contributions to literature and science. 



Even the Indian races of the new world, wherever nature permitted 

 the accumulation of the wealth derived from a genial climate and fertile 

 soil, have left, as in Mexico and in Peru, splendid monuments of their 

 advancement in the arts of life. Everywhere the basis is the same; it 

 was rice and wheat culture on one continent, maize on the other. 



How many ages were consumed in impressing the stamp of utility 

 upon the products of wild nature, it is impossible to tell. Some of the 

 most useful food plants are found in a wild state. Wheat in upper 

 Egypt and the hill country of India; rice of excellent quality, though 

 not identical in species, abounds in the North American Lakes. 



But the wild wheat is a thin and comparatively miserable seed, un- 

 fitted for bread, and the wild rice, though productive, is black and 

 coarse compared with its cultivated kindred. The noble proportion of 

 flesh-producing material contained in wheat represents to us the flesh 

 and blood of thousands of generations who have perished in bringing 

 it to its present perfection. 



As with wheat and rice, so all the varied products of our gardens 

 and fields are trophies of man's conquest over wild nature, for to what- 

 ever he brings his intelligence he seems to impart an added beauty and 

 utilit}'. A wild plant or animal is only such in its relations to him, its 

 separation, so to speak, from his uses; and the nearer animal life ap- 

 proaches to man in the scale of power and intelligence, the more 

 capable it seems of entering into his service. 



This process of assimilation began in the morning of time, and has 

 lei'i no trace of its earlier steps. The oldest agricultural records, are 

 seen upon the Egyptian monuments, where we find the foodful date 

 tree everywhere represented. The banks of the Tigris, Euphrates, and 

 the Nile, were doubtless the scenes of the earliest attempts at agricul- 

 tural labors, in propagating and increasing the fertility of this tree, upon 

 which both men and animals depended for sustenance. It is a singular 

 fact that the date requires artificial impregnation. This fact was early 

 discovered, and led to a simple festival known to this day as the marriage 

 of the palm, in which not onl} r the peasants, but camels, asses, and even 

 fowls and dogs participate. The exuberance of vegetable life in the 

 valley of the Nile, where a favorable temperature is constant, and 

 where inexhaustible fertility is maintained by the periodical distribu- 

 tion of new materials, accounts' for the speed with which wealth was 

 created and population increased. Four hundred date palms may be 

 grown on one and three quarters acres of land, each bearing a hundred 

 pounds of fruit. From the rich soil of the river the lotus furnished a 



