staple, and is obliged to seek far and near the material ne- 

 cessary for food and for its industries, more than ever there 

 is need of wide and above all of prosperous markets. The 

 wealth of all is advantageous to each taken separately; and 

 in agriculture, more than in other industries, it can be truly 

 said that by contributing to the prosperity of other countries 

 each country promotes its own. 



The experimental stations which are now being established 

 in India to study the diverse features of the ancient agri- 

 culture of that country, even in the arid districts of the pen- 

 insula, will probably repay Southern Europe for the valuable 

 lessons which Indian engineers learnt from the irrigation sy- 

 stems of Italy and Spain, and from the wise legislation which 

 in Lombardy allowed the growth of irrigation during the 

 stormy Middle Ages. At the present day, experience acquired 

 in India and Egypt is being applied to restore to Mesopo- 

 tamia, now a desert, the marvellous fertility which irrigation 

 had procured in Biblical times to the land between the 

 Euphrates and the Tigris. 



Often the wisdom of centuries of experience and of adap- 

 tation is stored in those ancient systems of agriculture which 

 seem backward and unwilling to progress; they should there- 

 fore be studied rather than ignored, or despised. Traditionary 

 practice may yet be able to teach valuable lessons in the culti- 

 vation of the soil to those younger countries which sometimes 

 think they have made new discoveries when in fact they are 

 applying methods which elsewhere are as old as the hills. Per- 

 haps knowledge of the traditional methods of cultivating the 

 soil in Sicily and Apulia and in some parts of Spain and the 

 Levant might be more instructive to those practising the rising 

 systems of dry farming, which rouse so great an interest in 

 the West of the United States and in the arid regions of the 

 Australian and South African Colonies, than is now supposed. 



It is not sufficient, in picturing the life and advance of 

 agriculture amongst the nations, to collect the evidence, 

 however precious, supplied by laboratory work and agricul- 

 tural experiment stations. Agriculture ought to be minutely 

 studied as practised on the farm, and data be gathered as to 



