THE FIRST HARVEST 



ing abundant fruit without pruning or cultivation.""^ In that 

 favoured district, the olive and the fig, the melon and 

 cucumber, onions, garlic, and shallots, and other common 

 garden and medicinal plants, can be found. Not far away is 

 the native country of the camel, the ass, the horse, and most 

 other domestic animals. 



Were these hillsides of Ararat or thereabouts, the first 

 place where man sowed and reaped a harvest ? 



At any rate, in those flat, fertile, alluvial plains of the 

 Euphrates, and also in Egypt, the first great cities arose. 



But even in the later Stone Age, which may have been 

 about 58,000 b.c, some of these Caucasian plants seem to 

 have been in cultivation in Switzerland. Probably every 

 subsequent invasion, first that of races with bronze weapons, 

 and then of others in the Iron Age, brought with it new 

 cultivated plants. 



The Oat seems to be an exception to the rule, for, so far as 

 one can gather, it was not a native of Asia Minor. 



The first harvest was, however, in all probability, a very 

 casual and occasional kind of thing. 



Mason (Origin of Inventions, page 192) has described 

 such a kind of cultivation which was in existence amongst 

 the American Indians quite recently. "A company of 

 Cocopa or Mohave or Pima women set forth to a rich and 

 favoured spot on the side of a canon or rocky steep. They 

 are guarded by a suflScient number of men from capture or 

 molestation. Each woman has a little bag of gourd seed, 

 and when the company reach their destination she proceeds 

 to plant the seeds one by one in a rich cranny or crevice 

 where the roots may have opportunity to hold, the sun may 

 shine in, and the vines with their fruit may swing down as 

 * De Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants. 

 s 273 



