174 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



its surface that any organic life was impossible ; and that it 

 was only after many ages had elapsed, — so many, indeed, as 

 to be entirely beyond finite comprehension, — that it was fitted 

 to sustain a few of those lower forms of organic life that were 

 capable of enduring a super-tropical climate ; and that even 

 after those lower forms of life were created, still other 

 geologic ages must have elapsed, each of which may be 

 modestly estimated at millions of years, before the climate 

 and soil were fitted for the higher forms of organic life, and 

 finally for man. 



And now, after the great forces of nature, light, heat, 

 frost, gravitation, electricity, winds and waves, ocean cur- 

 rents and earthquakes, have been operating for countless ages 

 to make this earth the beautiful and fruitful abode of the 

 human family, is it possible that, by human agency, in a 

 comparatively short period it can be shorn of its beauty and 

 fertility, or its climate so changed as to render it unfit for 

 man's abode ? Can man by his works aifect in any appre- 

 ciable degree the " mad, untamed elements that set on fire 

 the heavens with falling thunderbolts and drench the earth 

 with floods"? is the subject for consideration this afternoon. 



In discussing the climatic influence of agriculture, the 

 destruction of forests and irrigation will be considered, as 

 well as the cultivation of the ordinary field crops. 



We suppose it to be an indisputable fact that a large ex- 

 tent of the earth's surface now a desolate and barren 

 desert was once clothed in the beauty of a luxuriant vegeta- 

 tion. No mighty cities could ever have had an existence on 

 the shifting sands that now almost conceal the sites of the 

 once proud capitals of those great empires, Assyria and 

 Babylonia. Their wealth and magnitude and glory, like that 

 of all other great cities, must have depended on a soil that 

 within no great distance yielded to the cultivator wholesome 

 fruits and grains in liberal supply. But where once stood 

 that mighty city with its walls, hanging gardens and tem- 

 ples, Babylon, the wonder of the world, and that other 

 city, little less in its glory and renown, Nineveh, now 

 desolation reigns supreme. Such is its barrenness that no 

 village of more than a few hundreds of miserable dwellings 

 can be found in the whole region. 



