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4 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Parr f,
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 histor y, and its present state.
4. The history of agriculture among the nations 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 throughout Europe; and during the dark ages was chiefly preserved on the estates of the church. With the 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 which 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,
Cuap. I.
Of the History of Agriculture in the Ages of Antiquity; or from the Deluge to the Establish- ment of the Roman Empire in the century preceding the vulgar@ra.
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 the high mountain of Ararat, near the Caspian sea,(fig. 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 different nations and governments. Of these the principal are those of the Assyrian empire, known as Babylonians, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, in Asia; the Jews and the Egyptians, chiefly in Africa; and 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 writings 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. 1600; Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, who wrote more particularly on the history and geography of Egypt, lived, the former in the fifth, and the Iatter in the sixth century, B. C.; and Hesiod, the ancient Greek writer on husbandry, in the tenth cen- tury preceding our era.
7. Estimating the value of the writers of antiquity on these principles, they may be con- sidered as reaching back to a period 1600 years before our era, or nearly 3500 years from the present time; and it is truly remarkable, that in the Eastern countries, at. that period, the state of agriculture and other arts, and even of machinery, does not appear to have been materially different to what they are in the same countries at the present day.