THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE. 477 



double misfortune agriculture has had to suffer from climate — 

 both extremes entering into a conspiracy to put it back ; since 

 the tropics ripened every thing for it without the trouble of cul- 

 tivation, while the frozen regions made it so much trouble to 

 cultivate that it would not try. This explanation would answer 

 pretty well, if nature had not happened to spread out a belt of 

 territory round the globe, which is neither arctic nor torrid, 

 but temperate, of very respectable 'dimensions,'' and admirably 

 fitted for any progressive demonstrations, had our enterprising 

 forefathers been so inclined. The simple truth may as well be 

 confessed at once : Our progenitors liked fighting one another 

 better than fighting stumps and swamps. That was the world's 

 boyhood, and, like the few boys left in our day, who are not 

 oldish little men in short clothes, those swift and supple sinews 

 chose the bow and spear, with the big wrestling ground of bar- 

 barian tribes, before the civilizing, but rather fatiguing, pickaxe 

 and shovel. A better excuse, I am inclined to think, though 

 far from a sufficient one, will be found in the paradoxical cir- 

 cumstance, that the great advantage of agricultural pursuits 

 has been their great hindrance. I mean the general indepen- 

 dence they allow, as providing, in themselves, the necessities of 

 living. This supersedes commerce, removes competition, and 

 so tends to quench enterprise. 



In affirming agricultural science to have passed through its 

 epoch of general discovery, however, I referred not so much to 

 the rude and slow advances it made for thousands of years 

 earlier, as to the more recent period when it took a sudden 

 start forward, and may be said to have first risen into the dig- 

 nity of an intellectual concern. These discoveries moved in 

 two directions, chemical and mechanical. Chemistry applied 

 analysis to the whole material of agriculture, plants and ani- 

 mals and all products, as well as soils ; whereas the stupidity 

 of ages had been taking it for granted that, since all earth is 

 earth, it matters nothing what its elements are, so the seed be 

 under ground. Mechanism stretched out its hand, and gave the 

 husbandman a new set of tools — a branch of the general turn 

 for mechanical invention and elaboration that has marked the 

 mental movement of the last hundred years. By both these 

 agencies, not only was a new principle introduced into the action 



