HO ir / KILLED THE TIC1EK. 57 



of the country, and though the homesteads may 

 be almost in ruins, they still cling to the family 

 inheritance with a fondness bordering on super- 

 stition, and it is the use and wont in India for 

 governments to allow proprietors or their de- 

 scendants to re-occupy lands long left waste. 

 Amongst the earliest notices of agriculture are 

 those in the Old Testament. How Adam lived is 

 not mentioned, but of his two sons, Abel was a 

 shepherd, and Cain had become a tiller of the 

 ground. In Noah's time the vine was cultivated, 

 and Noah's descendants in the time of Shem 

 appear to have followed the shepherd's life 

 (nomads), wandering over the extensive 

 countries to winter and summer quarters, 

 and taking possession of the available graz- 

 ing grounds. These do not seem ever to have 

 cultivated any of the grasses for food for their 

 cattle; and to the present day throughout South- 

 Eastern Asia, the natural herbage is exclusively 

 relied on. 



The remains of the races who in some unknown 

 time came from the valley of the Indus through the 

 valleys of Beluchistan, attest the prevalence there 

 in pre-historic times of water tillage in the usual 

 form of the wet cultivation of India, where the 

 grounds are carefully levelled and put into small 

 plots or compartments, into each of which the 



