4,08 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



sor as though the last was only a previous one bom over again. 

 And to-day the thoroughbred Egyptian uses the same kind of 

 hydraulic machinery to lift the water of the Xile into the troughs 

 which conduct it to his garden that Abraham saw when he and 

 Sarah made their visit to that country twenty centuries before the 

 Christian era. Within the sound of the modern railway engine's 

 whistle the old Shadoof — the same used in the days of Sesostris — 

 lifting its single bucket of water at a sweep, sends out its monot- 

 onous creak upon the morniug air, and the basket of palm leaves 

 still performs its ancient hydraulic duties. 



The critic, who may admit the power of climate in thus mould- 

 ing a people into one homogenous mass, should not demand that 

 we account for all the political and social changes that may have 

 occurred among such a people, as the results of the local opera- 

 tions of the same natural laws. 



The great invasion of the ancient Asiatic shepherd kings who 

 overthi-ew the old empire and introduced the monotheistic ideas 

 of the east to Egyptian religion, or the still greater movement, 

 under the leadership of Psamoneticus, by which the ports of 

 Egypt were thrown open to the commerce of the Mediteranean, 

 and the intellectual wealth of the country allowed to flow out to 

 fertilize and energize the nations living to the north of that mid- 

 land sea, if analyzed from another stand-point, may be found to 

 have owed no small portion of their momentum to the same great 

 laws of nature. An examination of the ancient Aztec and Peru- 

 vian civilizations on our western hemisphere would furnish ample 

 proof in support of our theory, but I wish to make some more 

 special observations upon that isothemeal zone into which our 

 own country falls. For this purpose it will be suflBcient to con- 

 sider the United States under two general divisions. The northern 

 section is characterized by extremes of heat and cold, having in 

 many places a range in temperature of 140°. Much of it is ridged 

 by high mountains and covered by deep valleys. Its coast line is 

 indented by deep bays and bold harbors. Its summer is short, 

 and weather so uncertain as to render harvests doubtful. The 

 winters are long, stormy, and inclemeut. 



The southern half of the United States is favored with a genial, 

 uniform climate. Along its southern border the difference be- 

 tween its summer and winter mean temperature in scarcely 15°, 

 The seasons glide so imperceptibly into each other there is no 

 dividing line to mark when the one ends or the other begins. 



