26 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Asia to Egypt on the west, where it terminated abruptly. 

 As within this zone we know that at first the population was 

 most dense along the seaward margin, history seems at once 

 to confirm the conclusion arrived at from physical data — that 

 it was the dwellers by the ocean agriculture first bade increase 

 and multiply. 



In Egypt the most ancient evidence of agriculture has been 

 obtained, but there is nothing in this evidence to lead to the 

 conclusion that the Nile Valley was the birthplace of the art ; 

 on the contrary, it seems to have been introduced there in a 

 somewhat advanced state. Wheat, which formed the staple 

 food of the people from the very earliest time, was not an indi- 

 genous species, nor has Egypt produced any one of the most 

 important esculents known to be in cultivation more than four 

 thousand years, unless it might be millet (Panicum miliacenm), 

 the origin of which is doubtful ; indeed, the lower portion of 

 the Nile Valley is not a region to which we would naturally 

 look for the origin of cultivated esculents, except rice, which 

 we know was not introduced into the country until after 

 Alexander's return from his Indian conquests. Presenting 

 the appearance of a lake during about three months of the 

 year, with a rainless climate, the indigenous species were 

 necessarily peculiar in their habits. In the upper portion of 

 the Nile Valley, between the Sobat ju.nction and Gondo- 

 koro, we can still, probably, see what Egypt was before man 

 laid hands upon it. Here a wilderness of tall reed-grasses 

 and sedge, interlaced with convolvulus and other climbing 

 plants, borders the river on either side, the land from which 

 this dense, tangled mass of vegetation arises being periodically 

 a morass or a parched desert.'-' Although its land, its 

 climate, and its flora preclude the possibility of Egypt being 

 the birthplace of agriculture, it was pre-eminently adapted, as 

 results have proved, to be the home of an agricultural people. 

 During more than six thousand years the Lower Nile Valley 

 has supported a population not only suflicient to cultivate its 

 soil, but to create that vast assemblage of monuments to which 

 we are so largely indebted for our knowledge of the past. In 

 following back the traces of civilization one important fact we 

 gather from Egyptian agriculture is, however remote its com- 

 mencement may have been, there was a more ancient agricul- 

 ture to which it owed its being. 



Let us now turn to the eastern extremity of the ancient 

 zone of population — to China and the adjacent portions of the 

 Asiatic Continent, extending from the tropics northward to- 

 wards cold latitudes. Here we at once discover all the con- 

 ditions necessary to the birth as well as the development of 



The Albert Nyanza." Sir S. W. Baker. 



