8 The Earliest Farming 



men and pioneer-farmers to-day ; and many a man who is 

 doomed to live and work in a city feels the call that it makes. 

 The necessity of making a sure living for his wife and children is 

 the thing that keeps him from breaking away, and it was this 

 same need which first led to the cultivation of land. 



After men had spent thousands of years hardily and pre- 

 cariously as hunters and herdsmen they discovered the art of 

 tillage, and thereby added greatly to their supply of food. How 

 did they learn to grow corn ? This is a question which has 

 puzzled inquirers for a long time. It all seems very easy to us 

 who have seen ploughs, harrows, and drills all our lives, who 

 have seen wagon-loads of seed coming from the stations and 

 hundreds of sacks carried from the mills. But let us imagine 

 ourselves living in Britain at a time when, no matter if we 

 tramped with our tribe from Land's End to John o' Groats, we 

 should not see a single ploughed field or a delved garden. In 

 some parts of the world wheat, barley, oats, beans, and peas 

 were growing wild among the other vegetation just as wild 

 vetches do to-day. While our savage forefathers lived chiefly 

 on venison and game with milk and meat from such flocks and 

 herds as they had, like boys to-day they tried all the berries, 

 fruits, seeds, nuts, and other forms of vegetation which seemed 

 likely to satisfy their hunger or prove pleasant to the taste. Among 

 the seeds which they found most satisfying were wheat, barley, 

 and oats. If they gathered a considerable quantity of these, they 

 might alter to a small extent their monotonous diet of meat and 

 milk, and no doubt they appreciated this change, and set a high 

 value on these seeds as part of their food. 



To the question how it came that corn was grown by cultivation 

 the most satisfactory answer seems to be as follows. When a 

 member of a savage tribe died and was buried, one of the customs 

 was for the relations to place food in the grave for the use of the 

 departed spirit. In the newly dug earth they put portions of all 



