RELATIONS OF AGRICULTURE TO MAN. 9 



dearmt:; with the most subtle questions of philosophy, havinj; 

 a beneficent code of laws, and sivilled in commerce and 

 manufactures, fifteen hundred years before Moses, and more 

 than three thousand years before the Christian era. The an- 

 tiipiity of the people about the Ganges is settled by astronomical 

 tables tliat admit of no mistake ; and equally well settled is it 

 that this people, who so flourished centuries before the first 

 gray dawn of civilization on Europe, and when America was all 

 unknown, made agriculture, carried to the highest perfection, 

 the basis of all their prosperity. These nations have been invaded 

 and plundered time and again, but have as often renewed them- 

 selves from the cultivation of the soil, and still have material and 

 mental greatness. On the other hand, the nomadic tribes of 

 Central Asia — the Huns, the Moguls, and the Tartars, who 

 have at different times overrun the world with their fierce 

 warriors, have never been able to form permanent empires. 



We come westward, and the same phenomena are presented. 

 Babylonia and Persia, Palestine and Egypt, have risen to 

 power and flourished long, when agriculture was the basis of 

 their civilization ; and tliey have passed away when that ceased 

 to be, or sunk equally witli that. Before Greece had risen or 

 Rome dominated over the nations, the law of the Medes and 

 Persians controlled an empire equalling in grandeur any that had 

 gone before or has come since. It covered all of western Asia, 

 and included one and hundred twenty-seven satraps who ruled 

 in the name of one great king. What was the foundation of that 

 power is seen by us in the remains of canals, and reservoirs and 

 aqueducts for irrigation ; for Babylon, wrote Herodotus, more 

 than three thousand years ago, was cliiefly watered by irrigation ; 

 and he declared it the most fruitful of all countries. For centu- 

 ries later, the elder Pliny said : " there is not a country in all the 

 East comparable to it in fertility." Some of the most stupen- 

 dous works that the intellect of man ever devised were there 

 constructed for the irrigation of the soil, in an almost rainless 

 region, which, from a desert, was converted into a garden and 

 made to blossom as the rose. 



How agriculture was honored will be seen by one of Xeno- 

 phan's stories that will be remembered by every school boy. 

 He tells how the Grecian envoy, Lysander, was received by 

 Cyrus the Younger, at Sardis, who pointed out to him the 



