14 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



ADDRESS OF M. C. BRIGGS, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, IN SACRAMENTO, 

 ON THURSDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 20, 1864. 



Ladies or the Christian Commission and Gentlejien of the 

 Agricultural Society: — There is one thing without "which gold, gal- 

 vanism, steam, skill, territoiy, fei'tility, laws, government, science, art, 

 position, climate, prowess, arsenals, navies, armaments, are as impossible 

 and useless as the phantasies of a dream. It is the bone and brawn, the 

 strength and courage, the glory and defence of nations. While it pros- 

 pers, they flourish; when it decays, they perish. It is the most filial 

 and expressive form which our recognition of the motherhood of nations 

 can assume. It is the sure source of a nation's wealth, the nursery of 

 its manhood, and the inexorable condition of its longevity. 



That thing is Agriculture — in the interests of which you have 

 assembled, and for the promotion of which I have framed this humble 

 address. 



It is conceivable that the rude and sparse tribes of very ancient times 

 subsisted upon spontaneous fruits, the results of the chase, and the flesh 

 of domestic animals; but the increase of population must everywhere 

 have created a necessity for the cultivation of the soil — a necessity 

 enforced by the keen urgency of hunger. Tillage, therefore, must have 

 kept even pace, beyond certain very narrow limits, with the growth of 

 the families of mankind. 



The meagre records of remote antiquity are little less than totally 

 silent upon the subject of tillage ; yet there are sufficient proofs that in 

 the oldest nations, as Egypt and Babylonia, agriculture, in its restricted, 

 etymological sense, was prosecuted with assiduity and perseverance, if 

 not with science and skill. Along the sacred Nile a strip of land meas- 

 uring Ave b}' five hundred miles must have fed a population as dense as 

 that which throngs the banks of the Indus to-day. The Chinese have 

 practised the art of fertilization (indispensable to successful agriculture) 

 from a date too remote to be accurately determined. The Japanese for 

 an indefinite period have gathered heavier crops f»om their terraced 

 hillsides than we from the virgin soil of our valleys. 



Most of the old nations have decayed, and as to all that identified 

 their national existence, expired. Enough is known of their fate to 



