and confined to the simplest operations of the husbandman. At 

 times it has nearly ceased to exist throughout the globe ; and 

 even when carried to the highest practical point of perfection in 

 one region, it has been unknown elsewhere, while it has again 

 fallen into desuetude, after having been for centuries the general 

 occupation of the people, the greatest source of private affluence, 

 and the chief cause of national prosperity. As a science and an 

 art, it has not only been intimately connected with the condition 

 of man in all his social relations, but is blended with the won- 

 drous history of his creation, and the revelations of his religion. 



After the expulsion, the first wants of the progenitors of the 

 human race were food and clothing, and the duty of providing 

 them devolved upon their sons the one becoming " a keeper 

 of sheep," and the other " a tiller of the ground." But there 

 was this remarkable limitation in the sentence for disobedience, 

 as to the application of the products of their industry those 

 of vegetation only being allowed as food : " Thou shalt eat the 

 herb of the field, till thou return unto the ground." This 

 interdiction continued during the antediluvian cycle ; but after 

 the flood, all animals were formally delivered over to the surviv- 

 ing patriarch, with this beneficent declaration : " Every moving 

 thing that liveth shall be meat for you. Even as the green herb, 

 have I now given you all things." 



Notwithstanding the precedence which the cultivation of the 

 earth necessarily claimed anterior to this momentous epoch, still, 

 for many generations the descendants of Noah lived a pastoral 

 life, and were nomade in their habits, although on receiving the 

 sceptre of the earth, " he began to be a husbandman," and one 

 of his first acts was " to plant a vineyard." 



Advancing from the mountainous regions of Ararat, into the 

 fertile and sunny vales of the Euphrates, the acquisition of large 

 flocks and herds, with wide ranges of pasturage, induced a less 

 laborious mode of subsistence than must have been indispensable 

 under the austere conditions, which the primeval inhabitants 

 w.ere permitted to live. These wandering habits were continued 

 throughout Chaldea and Canaan, down to the patriarchal ages 

 of Isaac and Jacob, and still prevail in the East, among the 

 Arab and Tartar shepherds of the present day. Like the off- 

 spring of Jabel, they " dwell in tents," and seek, as of old, foun- 



