No. 4.] FAEMERS' NATIONAL CONGRESS. 339 



planted it with bearded grasses, bearing seed like the corn 

 of Egypt, Europe shook oft* the sleep of ages, to take her 

 place for the amelioration and advancement of mankind 

 from barbarism to civilization. Mauritania, the Moor coun- 

 try of Africa, then fed Rome, and Carthage as a Roman 

 state was an important wheat-producing centre. But when 

 Europe became wheat and grain producing, Rome declined 

 and fell from her high estate as ruler of the world. Rome 

 was a military power, not agricultural. She trained soldiers, 

 and depended upon other lands to supply her armies, with- 

 out which she became powerless. 



Wheat and the cultivation of it invigorated man in its 

 planting, reaping, threshing, and in its eating, so that he 

 became hardy and strong, and superior in physical and 

 mental endowment over his brethren who, with less effort, 

 made their diet of roots, herbs and the natural fruits. 



America now, as ancient Mauritania, Carthage and Gaul 

 once did, gives to the world of her surplus abundance of 

 wheat. The reaping machine, binder and thresher of our 

 day wear iron crowns of more worth and service to human- 

 ity than those of the Lombards ; and the kernels of wheat 

 produced by their agencies rival drops of water of the 

 oceans and sands upon their shores. 



It is not a wonder that the ancients, as recorded in 

 mythology, offered sacrifices to Ceres, the goddess of grain 

 harvests, and that in the flight of their imagination she be- 

 came a planetoid, symbolical of the small star grains sown 

 to produce the harvest of the universe. 



Ages, like grains of wheat when sown, repeat themselves. 

 Pharaoh, under the guidance of his prime minister, that 

 Hebrew Joseph of master mind, bought up all the wheat of 

 Egypt and stored it against the day of short crops ; and as 

 a consequence he became master of the situation, which led 

 to his and his people being the slave masters of Israel for 

 a period of four hundred years. 



The Emperor Julian, in the fourth century, A.D., at 

 Antioeh, was held responsible by his subjects for a poor 

 harvest, high price of bread and monopoly of the grain 

 market speculators. He, to quiet them, sold his grain, and 



