PROLOGUE 1 1 



an almost impossible flight of the imagination to go back to the 

 point where the first faint idea of power-navigation was born in 

 the dim-lit .brain of some low-browed, prehistoric man as he in- 

 stinctively clung to a flood-borne tree and rode to safety on some 

 lee shore. Other ages passed before some primitive Edison 

 proudly presented the first dugout canoe to his amazed world 

 a miracle of creation which he had painstakingly hacked and 

 hollowed out with a crude stone implement. For still other ages 

 primitive man pushed and poled and paddled his unwieldy dug- 

 out about in the safe shallows of the shore waters, until some 

 venturesome Columbus got caught off-shore in the teeth of a 

 gale. As he stood up in the prow of his canoe perhaps in a 

 last despairing call upon his gods his body became a mast and 

 a sail, speeding him to safety on the wings of the wind, while 

 the idea of power-navigation took hold of his groping imagi- 

 nation and awakening intelligence. 



Thus it was in the case of agriculture. The obvious possi- 

 bility of tilling the soil and growing his food did not occur to 

 the mind of man until very late in the history of the race. He 

 wandered over the face of the earth in search of precarious 

 sustenance, subject to the vicissitudes of the elements and often 

 facing famine. Only with the coming of agriculture and a sure 

 supply of food was man able to settle down in one place and 

 develop from a wandering tribe into a nation of people, rooted 

 in the soil of permanent habitation. 



In even a superficial study of the ideas which have influenced 

 civilization, the inevitable conclusion must be reached that the 

 birth and development of agriculture is the greatest of all in- 

 ventions, the father-mother foundation of life and progress in 

 civilization as we know it. Food came first, food still comes 

 first, and the production of food is still the universal and prime 

 occupation of man. 



In spite of all the inventions and mechanization that have 

 taken place in the development of agriculture the vast industry 

 for the chemical fertilization of the soil, the improvement and 



