from the produce of a Garden cultivated with his own 

 hands, how he had endured his poverty, Abdaloniraus ans- 

 wered, " May Heaven assist me in bearing my prosperity as 

 well ! I then had no cares, and my own hands supplied all 

 my wants."* 



For many ages after the Creation, the Arts and Sciences 

 were chiefly confined to the Eastern Nations. In tracing the 

 progress of the Agricolan Arts, in those early periods we 

 must gather into one general outline the scanty information 

 afforded by our oldest records of those times and countries. 



Of the disposition of the Garden of Eden, we know no- 

 thing ; to Poetic fiction it has been a fertile subject, but the 

 Historian has no facts to relate. Horticulture being the al- 

 most sole occupation of our first Parents and their immediate 

 descendants, and their attention being directed to those few 

 Trees which afforded them sustenance, and perhaps the still 

 fewer herbs that served them as medicaments, it is reasonable 

 to conclude that in the course even of an ordinary life, one 

 person might obtain considerable skill in their cultivation, 

 but the practice of an existence protracted to a period em- 

 bracing eight or nine centuries, and the experience of it par- 

 ticipated in by descendants long arrived at maturity before 

 its extinction, must of necessity have carried forward the im- 

 provement of the Art, as much nearly as now would occur in 

 an equal number of generations. Experience soon would 

 teach mankind those vegetables which were salutary, and the 

 same unerring guide would speedily disclose the situations 

 and circumstances in which those were in the greatest per- 

 fection. The Vine would be observed most vigorous in those 

 warm climates, by the side of the stream, and thence Man would 

 learn to carry Water to those at a distance from its banks. He 

 would see those of its clusters first ripening which were open 

 to the sun, and he would learn to expose them to its influence; 

 * Ju'it. ii. c. 10. Q. Cuitius 4. c. 1. Diodorus 17. 



