AGRICULTURE. 461 



to their excellence. The fields and gardens of the ancient Romans 

 were nearly as well cultivated as our own : their food was quite as 

 delicious ; their dresses were as durable, and as gay, if not so fine in 

 texture ; their furniture was nearly as comfortable ; and what they 

 most desired, they procured, though at great expense, from foreign 

 parts. But instead of a few fertile spots, vast regions, which were 

 then impermeable forests, are now brought under tillage : silk, which 

 in Rome was a luxury for princes, is now worn by the common 

 classes of society ; cotton, which there was barely known, is now, 

 by the aid of machinery, become the cheapest of fabrics ; domestic 

 comforts are multiplied ; and commerce, aided by the mariner's 

 compass, and the mighty power of steam, now distributes with sur- 

 prizing facility, the productions of every clime, over all the civilized 

 portions of the globe. 



Wiih these introductory remarks, we proceed to consider the indi- 

 vidual branches of Chreotechnics, in the order already pointed out ; 

 Agriculture ; Horticulture ; Domiculture ; Vestiture ; Furniture ; and 

 Commerce. 



CHAPTER I. 



AGRICULTURE. 



AGRICULTURE is the art of cultivating the ground ; including, in its 

 ordinary acceptation, the rearing and management of domestic ani- 

 mals. Its name is derived from the Latin, ager, a field ; and cultus, 

 tillage or cultivation ; and the term Rural Economy has, we believe, 

 nearly the same meaning; including, perhaps, something of Architec- 

 ture and Gardening. It has been termed Farming, from the word 

 farm, which in England usually signifies a portion of land leased or 

 rented ; and it has also been called Husbandry, though this word 

 has often a wider signification, as synonymous with good manage- 

 ment of one's business, and provision for one's family. Agriculture, 

 though apparently simple in its operations, still derives benefit from 

 various sources of knowledge. From Machinery, it borrows its im- 

 plements ; from Chemistry, it may derive a knowledge of soils, and 

 the means of fertilizing them ; from Botany, a knowledge of the 

 plants which it cultivates or eradicates ; and from Zoology, it may 

 learn the habits and peculiarities of the animals which it rears, with 

 the means of improving and training them for greater utility to man- 

 kind. 



As Agriculture is one of the arts essential to the existence of 

 society, it was cultivated in the earliest ages of human history. 

 Cain was a tiller of the ground ; Abel was a shepherd ; and Noah 

 planted a vineyard. That this art was carried to great perfection in 

 ancient Egypt, is evinced by the dense population which that remark- 

 able land must have sustained, in the age when the pyramids were in 

 progress, and Thebes was in its glory. The poem of the Works and 

 Days, by Hesiod, is a description of early Grecian Agriculture ; and 



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