— SS=e 2

12 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Parr I.

state, and the scene of the pastoral and hunting employments of the nomadic nations, the Kelts or Celts, the Goths, and the Slaves. ae:‘

40. The Indian and Chinese nations appear to be of equal antiquity with the Egyptians. Joseph de Guignes, an eminent French Oriental scholar, who died in the first year of the present century, has written a memoir(in 1759, 12mo.), to prove that the Chinese were a colony from Egypt: and M. de Guignes, a French resident in China, who pub- lished at Paris a Chinese dictionary in 1813, is of the same opinion, The histories of the Oriental nations, however, are not yet sufficiently developed from the original sources, to enable us to avail ourselves of the information they may contain as to the agriculture of so remote a period as that now under consideration.

41. With respect to the American nations during this period, there are no facts on record to prove either their existence or their civilisation, though Bishop Huet, and the Abbé Clavigero, think that they also are descendants of Noah, who, while in a nomadie state, arrived in the western, through the northern parts of the eastern continent.

Cuar. II.

History of Agriculture among the Romans, or from the Second Century B. C. to the Fifth Century of our era.

42. We have now arrived at a period of our history where certainty supplies the place of conjecture, and which may be considered as not only entertaining but instructive. The attention of the Romans to agriculture is well known. The greatest men amongst them applied themselves to the study and practice of it, not only in the first ages of the state, but after they had carried their arms into every country of Europe, and into many countries of Asia and Africa. Some of their most learned men, and one of their greatest poets wrote onit; and all were attached to the things of the country. Varro, speaking of the farms of C. Tremellius Scrofa, says,« they are to many, on account of their culture, a more agreeable spectacle than the royally ornamented edifices of others.” (Var. de R. R. lib. i. cap. 2.) In ancient times, Pliny observes, the lands were culti- vated by the hands even of generals, and the earth delighted to be ploughed with a share adorned with laurels, and by a ploughman who had been honored with a triumph.(Nat. Hist. lib. xviii. c. 3.) The Romans spread their arts with their conquests; and their agriculture became that of all Europe at an early period of our era.

43. The sources from which we have drawn our information being first related, we shall review, in succession, the proprietorship, occupancy, soil, culture, and produce of Roman agriculture.

Sect. I. Of the Roman Agricultural Writers.

44. The Roman authors on agriculture, whose works have reached the present age, are Cato, Varro, Virgil, Columella, Pliny, and Palladius. There were many more, whose writings are Jost. The compilation of Constantine Poligonat, or, as others consider, of Cassius Bassus, entitled Geoponicka, already mentioned(18.), is also to be considered as a Roman production, though published in the Greek language at Constan- tinople, after the removal thither of the seat of government.

45. M. Porcius Cato, called the Censor, and the father of the Roman rustic writers, lived in the seventh century of the republic, and died at an extreme old age, B. C. 150. He recommended himself, at the age of seventeen, by his valor in a battle against Annibal; and afterwards rose to all the honors of the state. He particularly distinguished himself as censor, by his impartiality and opposition to all luxury and dissipation; and was remarkably strict in his morals. He wrote several works, of which only some fragments remain, under the titles of Origines and De Re Rustica. The latter is the oldest Roman work on agriculture: it is much mutilated, and more curious for the account it contains of Roman customs and sacrifices, than valuable for its georgical information.

46. M. Terentius Varro died B. C. 28, in the 88th year of his age. He was alearned writer, a distinguished soldier both by sea and land, and a consul. He wasa grammarian, a philosopher, a historian, and astronomer; and is thought to have written five hundred volumes on different subjects, all of which are lost, except his treatise De Re Rustica. This isa complete system of directions in three books, on the times proper for, and the different kinds of, rural labour; it treats also of live stock, and of the villa and offices. As Varro was for some time lieutenant-general in Spain and Africa, and afterwards retired and cultivated his own estate in Italy, his experience and observation m ust have been very considerable,