Agricidture. 375 



South-Carolina, bid fair to be highly useful, and to 

 afford an honourable specimen of American enter- 

 prise. In several of the other States plans of the 

 same kind have been formed, and partly executed ; 

 and there is every probability that a few years more 

 will present us with a large amount of this species 

 of improvement in many parts of our country. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



AGRICULTURE. 



PsO art is of more ancient date than this. It em- 

 ployed our first parents in Paradise; and has been 

 more or less an object of pursuit in all ages. Like 

 almost every other object of human attention, how- 

 ever, it has undergone numberless revolutions of 

 decline and revival, in different periods, and among 

 different nations. In Egypt, in Palestine, in 

 Greece, in Persia, and in the Roman Empire, this 

 art, successively, rose into importance, flourished 

 under various wise encouragements, and gradually 

 declined with the learning, taste, and industry of 

 those respective countries. From the time of 

 CoNSTANTiNE the Great, to the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century, the annals of agriculture fur- 

 nish little worthy of attention. About the latter 

 period, in consequence of many laudable efforts 

 made by men of iniiuence, and the publication of 

 several valuable works on the subject, this art be- 

 gan to revive in France, and in Flanders. The 

 inhabitants of those countries endeavoured, for a 

 considerable time, to conceal the means v.hich 

 they used tor improving and increasing the pro- 

 ductiveness of their lands. Whoever^ therefore. 



