ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 139 



the ordinary Scriptural allusions, a reference to Egyptian 

 remains in the British Museum, a dissertation on hierogly- 

 phics and on the origin of alphabets, and a long quotation 

 from Pliny, descriptive of the rise and subsidence of the 

 Nile, and of the agricultural operations consequent thereon. 



Our knowledge of the subject in question has not only 

 been confirmed, but also very much enlarged, of late 

 years. The notices of it which occur in Diodorus, Strabo, 

 Pliny, Plutarch, and other writers, have been brought 

 together by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in the first volume of 

 the second series of his " Manners and Customs of the 

 Ancient Egyptians." They receive a most interesting 

 illustration from the drawings which this distinguished 

 traveller and his fellow-labourers have brought to light 

 from the tombs. Not only is the manner in which these 

 men of old performed the operations of husbandry placed 

 strikingly before our eyes, but we are admitted at once 

 into the penetralia of the economical, and, we might almost 

 say, moral management of a farm. The owner, attended 

 by his faithful dog, watches the work ; the scribe or clerk, 

 with his desk and double stand, containing black and red 

 ink, receives and records the tale of corn, cattle, poultry, 

 and even eggs ; the labouring men and beasts plough, sow, 

 reap, thresh, winnow, are rewarded and punished ; and, 

 finally, the despised neat-herd leads before us an ox, one of 

 Pharaoh's fattest kine, whose fair proportions are, no 

 doubt, intended to be a satire on the deformity of his 

 attendant. Our enumeration contains less than one-half 

 of what is vividly portrayed. Sir Gardner, intimately 

 acquainted with present Egypt, traces in many instances 

 the analogy which exists between ancient and modern 

 practice. Most of our readers are probably acquainted 

 with his work; those who are not have a rich treat in 

 store. 



We can hardly suppose that Mr. Hoskyns was ignorant 

 of Dickson's book, which has been frequently quoted in the 

 " Royal Agricultural Journal " and other kindred publica- 



