46 TILLERS OF THE GEOUND CHAP. 



rice, sweet potato, wheat, and two kinds of millet. 

 The emperor at the same time also ploughs a 

 portion of the sacred field. From the records of 

 that wonderful nation we know that this ceremony 

 goes back to two thousand seven hundred years 

 before Christ ; not so very far. short of five thousand 

 years ago. The ceremony was started then by the 

 Emperor Chenming, and though it means nothing 

 now, it must have meant then that the knowledge 

 of agriculture was so precious that it was part 

 of religion, and was the special attribute of the 

 emperor. 



This early connection of agriculture and religion 

 has one very interesting result. We cannot tell 

 directly how and where agriculture began, because 

 the beginnings were among people who did not 

 know how to record their history. But, though 

 they wrote nothing, they fixed their experience and 

 their learning in their religion, in ceremonies the 

 meaning of which their children forgot while they 

 remembered the ceremonies. Almost every people 

 -and every race in the world, civilised and uncivilised, 

 has such " fossil " ceremonies, the meaning of which 

 they cannot explain. Scientific men, with infinite 

 care and patience, have collected from all over the 

 globe instances of these curious rites and cere- 

 monies, and from the collections so made they 

 .have succeeded in spelling out dimly the history of 



