PROGRESSIVE AGRICULTURE. 223 



pear, peach, plum, quince and cherry, with figs, lemons and 

 other fruits suited to their location. But the leaders and 

 rulers of Greece were more anxious to build and adorn beau- 

 tiful cities than to bring her soil to the highest degree of 

 fertility ; so this work was mainly conducted by the unfor- 

 tunate whom they had subdued from the weaker nations and 

 tribes which surrounded them, and fell into a decline. 



With the Romans, agriculture was not only a pride, but a 

 foundation principle. The State apportioned to each citizen 

 a carefully restricted tract of land ; and one of their orators 

 said, " He was not to be counted a good citizen, but rather 

 a dangerous man to the State, who could not content him- 

 self with seven acres of land." 



As Rome by conquest extended her domain, these restric- 

 tions were removed, and one might hold fifty, and later five 

 hundred acres. Still they held to the importance of thor- 

 ough rather than of extensive farming. 



Cato the censor, great as an orator, a general and a states- 

 man, is looked upon as having done the best work for his 

 country in writing a book on agriculture, and it is he who 

 says, "Our ancestors regarded it as a great point of hus- 

 bandry not to have too much land in one farm, for Ihey con- 

 sidered that more profit came from holding little and tilling 

 it well." And Virgil says, "The farmer may praise large 

 estates, but let him cultivate a small one." 



We find that following the conquest of Spain by the 

 Moors, early in the eighth century, agriculture in this coun- 

 try received unusual attention, and that, owing to a system 

 of irrigation then adopted, the agricultural resources of 

 Spain were developed to such an extent that the Moors 

 derived from this country an annual revenue of $30,000,000 ; 

 "a sum," as Gibbon says, "which in the tenth century 

 probably surpassed the united revenues of all the Christian 

 monarchs." 



To produce such results required enormous outlay of skill 

 and labor in building reservoirs and artificial watercourses, 

 traces of which still remain. This system was evidently 

 taken westward from Asia and the valley of the Nile, where 

 in very ancient times extensive and very costly works for 

 irrigation were built, exceeding anything of the kind of mod- 

 ern construction. 



