State Agricultural Society. 261 



air being regarded as no less essential to the perfect maturing of the 

 grape than constant sunshine. The art of preserving the grape itself 

 for the use of the table, either in a fresh state, or as raisins, was every- 

 where practiced. 



The richest agricultural and horticultural contributions have come 

 down to us from the master minds of Greece. The}- drew their inspira- 

 tion directly from nature herself, and not from what some earlier writer 

 had said about nature. The pupil of Socrates, the leader of the immor- 

 tal retreat of the ten thousand, from his farm at Elis wrote: "Agri- 

 culture, for an honorable and high-minded man, is the best of all occu- 

 pations and arts by which men procure a living; for it is a pursuit that 

 is most easy to learn and most pleasant to practice; it puts the bodies 

 of men in the fairest and most vigorous condition, and is far from giving 

 such constant occupation to their minds as to prevent them from attend- 

 ing to the interests of their friends or their country. A man's home and 

 fireside are the sweetest of all possessions." 



Hesiod's "Works and Days" are devoted to the rustic lore which 

 embodied the experience then attained. Nor can we fail to see how apt 

 those Yankees of the Orient were to snatch every improvement, every 

 new culture, from the nations they concpiered, as we read Homer's de- 

 scription of the gardens of Alcinous, where flourished — 



High and broad fruit trees that pomegranates bore; 

 Sweet fig*, pears, olives, and a number more 

 Most useful plants did there produce their store, 

 Whose fruit- the hardest Winters could not kill, 

 Nor hottest Summers wither; there was still 

 Fruit in his proper season, all the year 

 Sweet zephyr breathed upon them, blasts that were 

 Of varied tempers; these he made to bear 

 Ripe fruits, these blossoms, pear succeeded pear, 

 Apple grew after apple, grape the grape, 

 Fig after fig; time made never rape 

 Of any dainty there. 



In Greece, also, we have the first example of public gardens created 

 by the magistrates for the use of the citizens; and history takes account 

 of the botanic garden founded by Theophrastus at Athens. Another 

 was created by Mithridates, King of Pontus, one hundred and thirty- 

 five years before Christ. 



It is very pertinent to our subject to inquire how all this came to be 

 changed — to find a reason for the Greece of to-da} r .* Mr. Felton 

 ascribes it to the lack of a common central government, to the seeds of 

 division planted by the predominance of the city over the country, to 

 extensive migrations, and the formation of rival confederacies. All 

 these were, doubtless, modifying causes, but we must look upon the 

 Greek experiment at civilization in a broader light — it was one of many 

 great experiments necessary to precede a conception of society in which 

 the quality of the units should be of the first importance. 



Pluto looked with distrust upon popular governments. He con- 

 sidered the people little better than a mob, and would have subjected 

 the individual entirely to the State. 



Not so Aristotle, the father of a rational polity. He maintains that 

 the legitimate object of government is not to increase the wealth of the 



*" Of Athens there remains only a small castle, a hamlet, undefended from foxes and 

 wild beasts. Its people, once free, arc now under the yoke of slavery to the cruelest 

 brutes." — [Nicholas Goibel, a writer of the sixteenth century. 



