6 History of the English Landed Interest, 



and the Egyptian farming system was not dissimilar to ours of 

 the present day, so that our agricultural progenitors Avoiild 

 have undoubtedly^ fallen into more skilled hands as regards 

 their particular industry had any of these nations possessed 

 the will and the power to invade our shores. When Rome ^ was 

 annually importing 20,000,000 bushels of Egyptian wheat to 

 supply the deficiency of her home growth, and other nations 

 were but just realising the digestive superiority of flour over 

 acorns, the inhabitants of the Delta were paying attention to 

 the rotation of crops, the making of hay, and the artificial 

 hatching of ]30ultry. Their ancient paintings and inscriptions 

 afford reliable evidence of their skill in erecting farm build- 

 ings, making fish-ponds, and preserving game. No wonder 

 they deified their chief product, corn, and worshipped the 

 ver}^ animals used in its cultivation. But at this period the 

 activity of European husbandmen seemed to ebb and flow like 

 the tides. In the prehistoric age of Greece, Hesiod - was 

 writing his Weelis and Dai/s, and then Greek agriculture 

 went to sleep almost until the days of Constantine IV., who 

 revived it by collecting into his Geoponics all that had been 

 written on the subject. 



But of the various nationalities who came in contact with 

 these islands we may assign to the Phoenicians the foremost 

 place. Unfortunately the type of Tyrian, or Sidonian, who 

 rubbed shoulders with our seaside tin miners, was not agri- 

 cultural, but seafaring, and no more qualified to understand 

 the tillage of soils than a British tar of the present century. 



But, agriculture excepted, what nation of those times could 

 have done us better or more permanent service than the 

 Roman, which laid the foundation-stone of that splendid power 

 which now rules so large a share of the world? It was their 

 road engineering'^ which welded together politically as well as 

 geographically the petty little tribes that existed prior to 



' Encylo. Brit., sub roc. Agrioulturo. 



^ Eees, FajcIo., sub vac. Agriculture. 



' Camden gives a graphic account of the Roman road-making, for 

 which fens were drained, embankments raised over low valleys, and 

 width allowed for two waggons abreast. Vide Britannia, part 1. 



