8 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



much the result of the ease with which the banks 

 of the Nile could then, as now, be cultivated, as of 

 any positive advances in agriculture. There ap- 

 pears little room for question, that, wherever man 

 was found, the cultivation of the soil more or less 

 prevailed. There is no reason to suppose that the 

 state of things in the plains of Mesopotamia, Tar- 

 tary, or Arabia, five thousand years ago, differed 

 essentially from the present ; and as we know that 

 three thousand years have passed over them, and 

 left their habits and their systems of agriculture un- 

 changed, those habits and systems may be consid- 

 ered a fair specimen of those which the necessities 

 of man first originated, and which have been there 

 perpetuated. 



As must have been expected, the implements 

 used in the infancy of agriculture were of the most 

 simple kind. The most ancient sculptures and 

 coins, and, above all, the paintings found in such 

 perfect preservation in the long-deserted temples 

 and tombs of Egypt, afford the most ample evidence 

 on this point. That the earliest instrument used to 

 loosen the soil was a kind of pick, made at first of 

 stone, bound to a handle of wood, is certain. The 

 employment of animal instead of human labour in 

 tilling the soil, or the substitution of the first for the 

 last, early occurred ; and the use of heifers in plough- 

 ing, or, where these were not at hand, the substitu- 

 tion of the ass, is clear from the frequent historical 

 notices of these facts. 



It is to the necessity which agriculture forced 

 upon men, of associating for the protection and 

 preservation of their crops, that the origin of socie- 

 ty may fairly be traced ; otherwise the world would 

 have remained, as it now mostly is where agricul- 

 ture is unknown, a mass of isolated families, with 

 conflicting interests, and constant additions to the 

 elements of dissension and confusion. The right of 

 soil, the nature of property, the accumulation of 



