Xll PREFACE. 



began to " eat bread in the sweat of his 

 face," the first husbandman. Hence it is 

 but natural to suppose that the earliest of 

 the sciences should have been handed down 

 from generation to generation in a religious 

 form ; and, when first reduced to writing, 

 that it should have retained that form. 

 So we arrive at the conclusion that the 

 earliest literature of which we have any 

 traces, very properly combined in itself the 

 principles of worship and progress, of reli- 

 gion and civilization. It is just this form 

 which gives such an air of high antiquity 

 to "The Book of Nabathrean Agriculture," 

 and which has induced Dr. Chwolson to 

 ask : "Had Greek literature been completely 

 lost to the world during the dark ages 

 which followed the fall of the Boman Em- 

 pire, and now, for the first time, the works 

 of Plato and Aristotle, of Hippocrates and 



