iv BEGINNINGS OF AGEICULTUEE 45 



Australian, the Tasmanian, the North American 

 Indian have died out, or diminished in numbers, 

 because they either did not cultivate at all or did 

 not cultivate enough. 



The advantages even of cultivating a few plants 

 must have been very great from the beginning ; 

 the discovery of its possibility must have marked 

 an epoch in the life of a people. How important 

 it was we can gather in various ways, and especially 

 by the connection between agriculture and religion. 

 Eeligion, we know, has to do with the part of life 

 that we recognise as the deepest and most im- 

 portant, with the things that cannot be questioned, 

 because the life of the whole people depends upon 

 them. Now -among almost all peoples when we look 

 deep enough we find a connection between agri- 

 culture and religion, sometimes a very close con- 

 nection. Again, just as the religion of a people, 

 when it is real, represents the most important part 

 of their individual life, so, especially among a simple 

 people, the king or chief as the head of the 

 community is directly associated with religious 

 ceremonies. We therefore find that among people 

 who are successful tillers of the ground, the king 

 is originally always the great agriculturist. 



In China, for example, there is an interesting 

 annual ceremony where five important plants are 

 sown by the emperor in the springtime, these being 



