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J\EJV'EJVGL^JVD FARMER; 



OR 



GEORGICAL DICTIONARY. 



AG R 



AGRICULTURE is the most 

 ancient, the most honourable and 

 the most useful of the arts. Its 

 origin was prior to the invention 

 of letters, and in attempting to 

 trace it, we are lost in the fables 

 which obscure the annals of anti- 

 quity. The most wise and most 

 powerful nations have ever been 

 the most assiduous in their atten- 

 tion to this art, and the degree 

 of estimation in which it has been 

 held, has ever, we believe, pre- 

 sented an accurate criterion of the 

 morals, prosperity and civilization 

 of any age or country. The 

 Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the 

 Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the 

 Greeks and the Romans, were as 

 greatly, and much more honoura- 

 bly distinguished by their atten- 

 tion to agriculture than by their 

 military achievements. Mago, a 

 Carthaginian, wrote books on 

 agriculture, which were not more 

 1 



AGR 



highly prized by his own country- 

 men than by their conquerors. 



The ancient Romans venerated 

 the plough, and their greatest ge- 

 nerals and most illustrious sena- 

 tors guided it with their own hands, 

 Cato, Varro, Virgil, Pliny and Co- 

 lumella wrote upon agriculture, 

 and Cicero has bestowed the high- 

 est eulogies on this art. But hus- 

 bandry declined with the decline 

 of the empire, and, as was well 

 observed by an able Writer, " In 

 the Campania of Rome, where, in 

 the time of Pliny were counted 

 twenty-three cities the traveller is 

 astonished and depressed by the 

 desolation that surrounds him." 



In some parts of continental 

 Europe the science of agriculture 

 is taught in universities, and a 

 regular education is thought to be 

 as necessary to qualify a man to 

 become a complete farmer as it is 

 to lit him for the practice of law or 



