ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 185 



viz, agriculture and the domestication of animals. Agriculture 

 began in Savagery. Many savage tribes cultivate little patches 

 of ground and thereby provide themselves with a part of their 

 subsistence. This petty agriculture does not of itself result in 

 any radical change ; but when the art has developed to such an 

 extent that the people obtain their chief subsistence therefrom, and 

 especially when it is connected with the domestication of animals, 

 so that these are reared for food and used as beasts of burden, the 

 change for which we seek is wrought. It seems that extensive agri- 

 culture was first practiced in arid lands by means of artificial irriga- 

 tion. In more humid lands the supply of food is more abundant, 

 and the incentive to agriculture is less. On the other hand, agri- 

 culture is more difficult in humid lands than in arid lands. The 

 savage is provided with rude tools, and with them he can more 

 easily train water upon desert soils than he can repress the growth 

 of valueless plants as they compete for life wjth those which furnish 

 food. The desert soil has no sod to be destroyed, no chapparal to 

 be eradicated, no trees to be cut down, with their great stumps to 

 be extracted from the earth. The soil is ready for the seed. Throw 

 upon that soil a handful of seed and then sprinkle it Avith a few cal- 

 abashes of water once or twice through the season, and the crop is 

 raised ; or train upon a larger garden patch the water of a stream 

 and let it flood the surface once or twice a year, and a harvest may 

 be reaped. 



Petty agriculture, such as I have described as belonging properly 

 to Savagery, has been widely practiced in the four quarters of the 

 globe among savage peoples, quite as much in humid as in arid 

 regions ; but the art seems not to have indigenously extended 

 beyond that stage in any but arid regions. The earliest real agri- 

 culture known to man was in the Valley of the Nile, an almost rain- 

 less land; but the floods of the Nile were used to fertilize the soil. 

 Again, in the land of Babylon, along the Tigris and the Euphrates, 

 extensive agriculture grew up, but it was' dependent upon artificial 

 irrigation. Still farther to the southeast, in the Punjab, another 

 system of indigenous agriculture was developed by utilizing the 

 waters of the five great rivers. Still farther to the east an indige- 

 nous agriculture was developed on an extensive scale, all dependent 

 upon artificial irrigation, as the Chinese use the waters of the Ho- 

 ang-ho and the Yang-tse-Kiang. In South America the first system 

 of agriculture was developed in Peru, all dependent uj^on artificial 



