42 TILLEES OF THE GKOUND CHAP. 



Wherever man learnt first to grow plants, then, it 

 must have been in a region of moderate climate. 



There must be an insufficiency of animal food, 

 or the climate must be so hot that much animal 

 food is not wanted. In the latter case the wild 

 plants must not be sufficient to produce food for 

 everybody. " When men can live without work," 

 says De Candolle, " it is what they like best. 

 Besides, the element of hazard in hunting and 

 fishing attracts primitive and sometimes civilised 

 man more than the rude and regular labour of 

 cultivation." We may suppose, perhaps, that agri- 

 culture would sometimes start in a country where 

 there were productive wild plants. The people 

 would multiply because there was good food, and 

 then, as they increased faster than the wild food- 

 plants, they perhaps began to cultivate these. 



In the Far East, cultivation was always easy 

 from the fact that the rains come in the warm 

 season when the plants need water to grow. When 

 the Chinese saw the whole country covered with 

 growing plants in the rainy season, the idea of 

 sowing seeds would be more likely to occur to 

 them. Again, in Egypt the periodical overflowing 

 of the Nile brought the water necessary for growing 

 plants, and would help to teach the people the 

 usefulness of sowing seeds. Afterwards, when in 

 the course of time they had learnt that it was 



