IRRIGATION IN EUROPE. 449 
ments of the savage races whose history we can distinctly trace 
are borrowed and imitative, and our theories as to the origin 
and natural development of industrial art are conjectural. Of 
course, the relative antiquity of particular branches of human 
industry depends much upon the natural character of soil, cli- 
mate, and spontaneous vegetable and animal life in different 
countries ; and while the geographical influence of man would, 
under given circumstances, be exerted in one direction, it would, 
under different conditions, act in an opposite or a diverging 
line. I have given some reasons for thinking that in the cli- 
mates to which our attention has been chiefly directed, man’s 
first interference with the natural arrangement and disposal of 
the waters was in the way of drainage of surface. But if we 
are to judge from existing remains alone, we should probably 
conclude that irrigation is older than drainage; for, in the 
regions regarded by general tradition as the cradle of the hnaman 
race, we find traces of canals evidently constructed for the 
former purpose at a period long preceding the ages of which 
we have any written memorials. There are, in ancient Armenia, 
extensive districts which were already abandoned to desolation 
at the earliest historical epoch, but which, in a yet remoter anti- 
quity, had been irrigated by a complicated and highly artificial 
system of canals, the lines of which can still be followed; and 
there are, in all the highlands where the sources of the Euphrates 
rise, in Persia, in Egypt, in India, and in China, works of this 
sort which must have been in existence before man had begun 
to record his own annals. 
In warm countries, such as most of those just mentioned, the 
effects I have described as usually resulting from the clearing of 
the forests would very soon follow. In such climates, the rains 
are inclined to be periodical ; they are also violent, and for these 
reasons the soil would be parched in summer and liable to wash 
in winter. In these countries, therefore, the necessity for irri- 
gation must soon have been felt, and its introduction into moun- 
tainous regions like Armenia must have been immediately 
followed by a system of terracing, or at least searping the hill- 
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