THE PROBLEM OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 25 



species were diffused. In the north of Asia, of Europe, and of America 

 the climate is unfavorable and the indigenous plants are unproduc- 

 tive; but as hunting and fishing offered their resources, agriculture 

 must have been introduced there late, and it was possible to dispense 

 with the good species of the south without great suffering. It was 

 different in Australia, Patagonia, and even in the south of Africa. 

 They were out of reach of the plants of the temperate region in our 

 hemisphere, and the indigenous species were very poor. It is not 

 merely the want of intelligence or security that has prevented the 

 inhabitants from cultivating them. Europeans established in these 

 countries for a hundred years have cultivated only a single species, 

 and that an insignificant green vegetable. 



In spite of the obscurity of the beginnings of cultivation in each 

 region, it is certain that they occurred at very different periods. One 

 of the most ancient examples of cultivated plants is in a drawing 

 representing figs, found in Egypt in the pyramid of Gizeh probably 

 four thousand years old. This people must then have had an estab- 

 lished agriculture dating back some centuries at least. Agriculture 

 appears to be as ancient in China as in Egypt, and the constant rela- 

 tions between Egypt and Mesopotamia lead us to suppose that an 

 almost contemporaneous cultivation existed in the valleys ,>f the 

 Euphrates and the Nile. 



The ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians propagated many 

 plants in the region of the Mediterranean, and the Aryan nations, 

 whose migrations toward Europe began about 2500, or at latest 

 2000, B.C., carried with them several species already cultivated in 

 Western Asia. Some plants were probably cultivated in Europe and 

 in the north of Africa prior to the Aryan migration. This is shown 

 by names in languages more ancient than the Aryan tongues; for 

 instance, Finn, Basque, Berber, and the speech of the Guanchos of 

 the Canary Isles. However, the remains, called kitchen middens, of 

 ancient Danish dwellings have hitherto furnished no proof of culti- 

 vation or any indication of the possession of metal. This absence of 

 metals does not in these northern countries argue a greater antiquity 

 than the age of Pericles, or even the palmy days of the Roman repub- 

 lic. Later, when bronze was known in Sweden a region far removed 

 from the then civilized countries agriculture had at length been 

 introduced. Among the remains of that epoch was found a carving 

 of a cart drawn by two oxen and driven by a man. The ancient 

 inhabitants of Eastern Switzerland, at a time when they possessed 



