4 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Part I. 



3. The early history of man in America rests on very indistinct traditions : there arts 

 and civilisation do not seem qf such antiquity as in Asia ; in North America they are 

 of very recent introduction ; but of the agriculture of either division of that continent, 

 and of India and China, we shall attempt little more than some sketches of the modern 

 liistory, and its present state. 



4. The history of agriculture, among the natiojis of what may be called classic antiquity, 

 is involved in impenetrable obscurity. Very few facts are recorded on the subject pre- 

 viously to the time of the Romans. That enterprising people considerably improved the 

 art, and extended its practice with their conquests. After the fall of their empire, it 

 declined tliroughout Europe ; and, during the dark ages, was cliiefly preserved on the 

 estates of the church. With tlie general revival of arts and letters, which took place 

 during the sixteenth century, agriculture also revived ; first in Italy, and then in France 

 and Germany; but it flourished most in Switzerland and Holland; and finally, in recent 

 times, has attained its highest degree of perfection in Britain. The modern agriculture 

 of America is copied from that of Europe ; and the same may be said of the agriculture 

 of European colonies established in different parts of the world. The agriculture of 

 China, and the native agriculture of India, seem to have undergone no change for many 

 ages. Such is the outline wliich we now proceed to fill up by details, and we shall adopt 

 the usual division of time, into the ages of antiquity, the middle ages, and the modern 

 times. 



Chap. I. 



Of the History of Agriculture in the Ages of Antiquity ; or from the Deluge to the Establish- 

 ment of the Roman Empire, in t/ie Century preceding the vulgar uEra 



5. The world, as known to the ancients, consisted of not more than half of Asia, and 

 of a small part of Africa and Europe. During the inundation of the deluge, a rem- 

 nant of man, and of other animals, is related to have been saved on the top of 

 tlie high mountain of Ararat, near the Caspian sea (Jig. 1.), and, when the waters sub- 



sided, to have descended and multiplied in the plains of Assyria. As they increased in 

 numbers they are related to have separated, and, after an unknown length of time, to 

 have formed several nations and governments. Of these the principal are tliose of the 

 Assyrian empire, known as Babylonians, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, in Asia ; of the 

 Jews and the Egyptians, chiefly in Africa; and of the Grecians, chiefly in Europe. 

 Least is known of the nations which composed the Assyrian empire ; of the Jews, more 

 is known of their gardening and domestic economy, than of their field culture ; the 

 Egyptians may be considered the parent nation of arts and civilisation, and are supposed 

 to have excelled in agriculture ; and something is known of that art among the Greeks. 



6. The authors whose ivritings relate to the period under consideration are few, and the 

 relations of some of them very contradictory. The earliest is Moses, who flourished 

 B. C. 1 600 ; Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, who wrote more particularly on the 

 history and geography of Egypt, lived, the former in the fifth, and the latter in the sixth, 

 century B. C. ; and Hesiod, the ancient Greek writer on husbandry, in the tenth century 

 preceding our aera. 



7. Estimating the value of the writers of antiquity on these principles, they may be con- 

 sidered as reaching back to a period 1 600 years before our sera, or nearly 3500 years 

 from the present time ; and it is truly remarkable, that, in the Eastern countries, the state 

 of agriculture and other arts, and even of machinery, at that period, does not appear to 

 have been materially diflTerent from what it is in the same countries at the present day. 



