24 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



some degree of security and settlement; lastly, a pressing necessity, 

 due to insufficient resources in fishing, hunting, or in the production 

 of indigenous and. nutritious plants, such as the chestnut, the date- 

 palm, the banana, or the breadfruit tree. When men can live without 

 work it is what they like best. Besides, the element of hazard in 

 hunting and fishing attracts primitive, and sometimes civilized, man 

 more than the rude and regular labor of cultivation. 



I return to the species which savages are disposed to cultivate. 

 They sometimes find them in their own country, but often receive 

 them from neighboring peoples more favored than themselves by 

 natural conditions, or already possessed of some sort of civilization. 

 When a people is not established on an island, or in some place diffi- 

 cult of access, they soon adopt certain plants, discovered elsewhere, 

 of which the advantage is evident, and are thereby diverted from the 

 cultivation of poorer species of their own country. History shows 

 us that wheat, maize, the sweet potato, several species of the genus 

 Panicum, tobacco, and other plants, especially annuals, were widely 

 diffused before the historical period. These useful species opposed 

 and arrested the timid attempts made here and there on less produc- 

 tive or less agreeable plants. And we see in our own day, in various 

 countries, barley replaced by wheat, maize preferred to buckwheat 

 and many kinds of millet, while some vegetables and other cultivated 

 plants fall into disrepute, because other species, sometimes brought 

 from a distance, are more profitable. The difference in value, how- 

 ever great, which is found among plants already improved by culture 

 is less than that which exists between cultivated plants and others 

 completely wild. Selection, that great factor which Darwin has had 

 the merit of introducing so happily into science, plays an important 

 part when once agriculture is established; but in every epoch, and 

 especially in its earliest stage, the choice of species is more important 

 than the selection of varieties. 



The various causes which favor or obstruct the beginnings of 

 agriculture explain why certain regions have been for thousands of 

 years peopled by husbandmen, while others are still inhabited by 

 nomadic tribes. It is clear that, owing to their well-known qualities 

 and to the favorable conditions of climate, it was at an early period 

 found easy to cultivate rice and several leguminous plants in Southern 

 Asia, barley and wheat in Mesopotamia and in Egypt, several species 

 of Panicum in Africa, maize, the potato, the sweet potato, and manioc 

 in America. Centers were thus formed whence the most useful 



