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AGRICULTURE  the oldest civilizations of the world, is still conspicuously characteristic of such Oriental countries as retain any national vitality, especially India, China, and Japan. For instance, Japan contains more inhabitants than the United Kingdom, and supports them without taking any food products from abroad (actually, indeed, exporting considerable quantities of rice), whereas England imports foodstuffs to the value of hundreds of millions of dollars. In the Middle Ages, agriculture was almost wholly disregarded throughout Europe, and, consequently, civilization was generally at a low ebb. On the other hand, the era of the Saracens in Spain is memorable for civilization, and particularly for its admirable agriculture. Without exception, all the European nations that enjoy eminence to-day possess carefully developed agricultural systems, while in Spain, the one noticeably backward country, agriculture languishes. It is proverbial that the wealth of France is not in her luxurious capital, but in her provincial acres. Belgium and Holland, the richest regions of Europe in proportion to area, with populations correspondingly dense, owe their pre-eminence to the elaborate cultivation. The collapse of the Mohammedan power finds one of its chief explanations in the indolence of the Turk and his neglect of the soil.

The first mention of agriculture is found in the writings of Moses. From them we learn that Cain was a “tiller of the ground”; that Abel sacrificed the “firstlings of his flock”; and that Noah “began to be a husbandman and planted a vineyard.” The Chinese, Japanese, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Phœnicians appear to have held husbandry in high estimation. The Egyptians were so sensible of its blessings that they ascribed its invention to superhuman agency, and even carried their gratitude to such an excess as to worship the ox, for his services as a laborer. The Carthaginians carried the art of agriculture to a higher degree than other nations, their contemporaries. Mago, one of their most famous generals, wrote no less than 28 books on agricultural topics, which, according to Columella, were translated into Latin by an express decree of the Roman Senate. Hesiod, the Greek writer, supposed to be contemporary with Homer, wrote a poem on agriculture, entitled “Weeks and Days,” which was so denominated because husbandry requires an exact observance of times and seasons. Other Greek writers wrote on rural economy, and Xenophon, among the number, but their works have been lost in the lapse of ages. Columella, who flourished in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, wrote 12 books on husbandry, which constituted a complete treatise on rural affairs. Pliny ascribes the invention of manures to the Greek King Augeas, and Theophrastus not only mentions six kinds of manures, but declares that a mixture of soils produces the same effects as manures. Cato, the Roman censor, equally celebrated as a statesman, orator, and general, derived his highest and most durable honors from having written a voluminous work on agriculture. In the “Georgics” of Vergil, the majesty of verse and the harmony of numbers add dignity and grace to the most useful of all topics. Varro, Pliny, and Palladius were likewise among the distinguished Romans who wrote on agricultural subjects.

It is interesting to note here that irrigation had an influential advocate as long ago as the time of Vergil, who in his “Georgics” advises husbandmen to “bring down the waters of a river upon the sown corn, and, when the field is parched and the plants drying, convey it from the brow of a hill in channels.” To the credit of the Romans let it be remembered that, unlike many conquerors, instead of desolating they improved the countries which they subdued, and first of all in agriculture.

Recent Progress.—From the details of primitive agricultural methods given in ancient writings and represented in monumental inscriptions, it is evident that not till the 19th century had anything very material been done toward the creation of a distinctive agricultural science. The original arts of husbandry, practiced ages ago, have simply been adapted, with little improvement till very lately, to modify conditions. Most of the mechanical appliances to which our ancestors were restricted—the plow, roller, hoe, sickle—are found pictured in the Egyptian inscriptions and paintings. It is also known that the Egyptians were familiar with the advantages of rotation in crops, and that they were exceedingly intelligent and systematic in the administration of estates and the regulation of all rural concerns. Within the last hundred years, however, the foundations of an entirely new agriculture have been securely laid. The two active agencies in this change have been chemical science and invention. Chemical science, as applied to agriculture, is based on very simple elements. The arable surface soil becomes exhausted if grain is sown upon it in successive years, this exhaustion being occasioned by the removal of the mineral substances necessary to the life of the grain. By