agricultural country has within itself the necessa- | Thy servants' trade hath been about cattle from ries and comforts of life; and, to defend these, our youth even until now, both we and also our there will never be wanting a host of patriot sol- fathers, that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen, diers. for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyp

"Of the pleasure attending the judicious culti-tians." But the keeper of flocks was so esteemed vation of the soil, we have the evidence of facts. by the agricultural Egyptians, "because, about a The villa farms sprinkled throughout our happy century before the arrival of Joseph among them, land, the establishments of Holkham, Woburn, &c., a tribe of Cushite shepherds from Arabia had conwould never have been formed, if the occupation quered their nation, and held them in slavery; till, connected with them was not delightful. We have after a sanguinary contest of thirty years, they rean unexceptionable witness to the same fact in the gained their liberty about twenty-seven years belate Mr. Roscoe, the elegant, talented author of fore Joseph was promoted by Pharoah. That the the Lives of Lorenzo de Medici and of Leo the Egyptians were flock-masters is certain, from many Tenth. Mr. Roscoe was the son of an extensive parts of the Scriptures. Thus, when Pharoah potato grower, near Liverpool. In the cultivation gave permission to the Israelites to dwell in Goshen, of that and other farm producé, he had been an he added, as he spoke to Joseph, 'And if thou active laborer and he who thus had enjoyed the delights that spring from literary pursuits, and from the cultivation of the soil, has left this recorded opinion, 'If I was asked whom I consider to be the happiest of the human race, I should answer, those who cultivate the earth by their own hands.'

knowest any men of activity among them, then make them rulers over my cattle;" and when the murrain came into Egypt, it was upon their horses, asses, camels, oxen, and sheep.3

"The attention and care necessary to be paid to their domestic animals were evidently well known and attended to; for when they proposed to settle "We have but little information to guide us, as in a land, their first thought was to build 'sheepto the country in which man first cultivated the folds for their cattle." They had stalls for their soil; nor of that in which he first settled after the oxen,' and for all their beasts. Thus King Hezedeluge. Thus much, however, is certain, that we kiah is said to have made 'stalls for all manner of have the earliest authentic account of the state of beasts, and cotes for flocks; moreover, he provided agriculture as it existed among the Egyptians and him possessions of flocks and herds in abundance;* their bond-servants, the Israelites. From the and that this abundance exceeded the possessions former, probably, the Greeks were descended. of the greatest of our modern flock-masters, we The Romans, at a later period, were a colony from Greece; and from the Romans the other countries of Europe derived their earliest marked improvement in the arts."

to us.

tion.

may readily acknowledge, when we read that 'Mesha, king of Moab, was a sheep-master, and rendered unto the king of Israel 100,000 lambs, and 100,000 rams, with the wool."

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9

calves

Of the agriculture of the Egyptians, Israelites, They prepared the provender for their horses and other early Eastern nations, the Bible gives and asses of chaff, or cut straw and barley. Our almost the only account that has been handed down translation does not explicitly state this, but it is Among these primitive nations, every tiller clear in the Hebrew original. It is also certain, of the earth-from the king on his throne to the from the Hebrew original, that they tied up peasant in his hut-had his lot of land for cultiva- and bullocks for the purpose of fattening them ;!" This system, in some respects, resembled and that they were acquainted with the arts of the the ALLOTMENT SYSTEM of Dr. Law, which was dairy. 'Surely the churning of milk,' says Solointroduced in England some 40 years ago or more, mon, bringeth forth butter; and Samuel speaks and which, as far as it has gone, has so wonder- of the cheese of kine." The chief vegetable fully ameliorated the poor man's condition there; products cultivated by these eastern nations were, since the introduction of this plan, the poor rate wheat, barley, beans, lentils, rye, the olive, and the has been steadily diminishing, and, from £320 the vine.13 year, it had gradually been lessened, till 1832when it had come down to only £180.

"The scanty notices which we have of their tillage, give us no reason to doubt that they were skilful husbandmen. The name for tillage emphatically expresses their idea of it; for it literally means to serve the ground. And that the cares

15

4

In the earliest times, division of labor was found necessary: "And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." These two distinctions were kept up among both the Israelites and Egyptians, as seperate and distinct occupa- Gen. xlvii. 6. 3 Exod. ix. 3. Numb. xxxii. 16. Hah tions-Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Laban and many iii. 17. 62 Chron. xxxii. 28. 12 Kings, iii. 4. Judges. 9 Dr. Kennicott's xxivth Codex. others in the Mosaic history, were great flock-xix. 21; 1 Kings, iv. 28. Harmer's Observations, i. 423. 10 Jerem. xlvi. 21; Amos, masters. "And it shall come to pass," said Joseph, vi. 4, &c., Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon, 673. 11 Prov. to his brethren, "when Pharoah shall call you and xxx. 31. 122 Sam. xxvii. 29. 19 Exod. ix. 31; Levit 111. say what is your occupation? That ye shall say, 10; 2 Sam. xvii, 28, &c. 14 Obed. Parkhurst, 508.

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19

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and attention necessary were well sustained, is evi- and was conveyed in carts,30 either immediately to denced by the fact, that David, for his extensive the threshing-floor or to the barn. They never estate, had an overseer for the storehouses in the formed it into stacks as we do. These passages in fields; another over the tillage of the ground; a the Scriptures refer exclusively to the thraves or third over the vineyards; a fourth over the olive shocks in which the sheaves are reared as they are trees; two to superintend his herds; a seventh cut.32 The threshing-floors, as they are at the over his camels; an eighth to superintend his present day, were evidently level plats of ground flocks; and a ninth to attend similar to the asses.16 in the open air. They were so placed that the "Of their ploughing, we know that they turned wind might, at the time of the operation, remove up the soil in ridges, similarly to our own practice; the chief part of the chaff. They, perhaps, had for the Hebrew name of a husbandman signifies a threshing-floors under cover, to be used in incleman who does so.17 That they ploughed with two ment seasons; for, Hosea, speaking of the sumbeasts of the same species attached abreast to the mer threshing-floors,' justifies such surmise. The plough. That the yoke or collar was fastened to instruments and modes of threshing were various. the neck of the animal; and that the plough, in its They are all mentioned in these two verses of the mode of drawing the furrows, resembled our own; prophet: Fitches are not threshed with a threshfor we read of their sharpening the coulter and the ing instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned upon ploughshare. Ploughing was an operation that the cummin, but the fitches are beaten out with a they were aware might be beneficially performed staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread-corn is at all seasons; for Solomon mentions it as a symp-bruised because he will not ever be threshing it, tom of a sluggard, that he will not plough in the nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise winter; and that too much care could not be de- it with his horsemen." When the seed was voted to it, they expressed, by deriving their name threshed by horses, they were ridden by men; and for ploughing from a Hebrew root, which signifies when by cattle, although forbidden to be muzzled, silent thought and attention."1 yet they were evidently taught to perform the "Their sowing was broadcast, from a basket;22 labor. The 'instrument' was a kind of sledge and they gave the land a second superficial plough- made of thick boards, and furnished underneath ing to cover the seed. It is true that harrowing is with teeth of iron. The revolving wheels of a mentioned in our translation;23 but Schultens and cart, and the various sized poles employed for the other Hebraists agree that harrowing was not prac-same purpose, need no further comment. To comtised by them. Russell, in remarking upon the plete the dressing of the corn, it was passed mede of cultivation now practised near Aleppo, through a sieve,39 and thrown up against the wind Bays, No harrow is used, but the ground is ploughed a second time after it is sown, to cover the grain.""

"The after-cultivation apparently was not neglected; they had hoes or mattocks, which they employed for extirpating injurious plants. On all hills,' says the prophet, that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briars and thorns. '25 In those hot climates a plentiful supply of moisture was necessary for a healthful vegetation; and the simile of desolation, employed by the same prophet, is 'a garden that hath no water." In Egypt they irrigated their lands; and the water thus supplied to them was raised by an hydraulic machine, worked by men in the same manner as the modern tread-wheel. To this practice Moses alludes, when he reminds the Israelites of their sowing their seed in Egypt, and watering it with their feet, a practice still pursued in Arabia.27

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11 Chron. xxvii. 25, 31. 17 Parkhurst, 93. 18 Deut. xxi. 10. 191 Sam. xiii, 20, &c. 20 Prov. xx. 4. 21 Parkhurst, 244. 22 Amos. xi, 13; Psalm cxxvi. 6. 23 Job. xxxix. 10, Parkhurst, 720. 25 Isa. vii. 25. 26 Isa. i. 30. 27 Deut. xi 10, Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabie, i. 121. 28 Jer. 1. 16; Joel, iii, 13. 29 Psalm cxxix. 7; Deut. xxiv. 19, &c.

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by means of a shovel. The fan was, and is still, unknown to the eastern husbandmen; and where that word is employed in our translation of the Scriptures, the original seems to intend either the

wind or the shovel.40

"Of their knowledge of manures we know little. Wood was so scarce that they consumed the dung of their animals for fuel. Perhaps it was this deficiency of carbonaceous matters for their lands that makes an attention to fallowing so strictly enjoined.2

"The landed estates were large, both of the kings and of some of their subjects; for we read that Uzziah, king of Judah, 'had much both in the low country and in the plains; husbandmen also, and vine-dressers in the mountains and in Carmel, for he loved husbandry; that Elijah found Elisha with twelve yoke of oxen at plough, himself being with the twelfth yoke;" and that Job, the greatest man of the east, had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, In the 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 she-asses. 15

$43

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30 Amos, ii, 13. 31 Exod. xxii. 6; Judg. xv. 5; Job, v. 26. 32 Harmer's Observ. iv. 145, &c. Judg. vi. 37; 2 Sam. xxiv. 18-25, &c. 4 Hosea ii. 35. 35 Isaiah, xxviii. 27, 28. 36 Deut. xxv. 4. 37 Hosea, x. 11. 98 Isaiah, xli. 15; Parkhurst, 242, 412. 39 Amos, ix. 9. 40 Isaiah, xxx. 24; Jer. xv. 7; Parkhurst, 183, 689. 1 Parkhurst, 764. 42 Levit. xix. 23; xxv. 3; Hosea, x. 12, &c. 432 Chron. xxvi. 10. ** 1 Kings, xix. 19. 5 Job, i. 3; xlii. 12.

45

time of Isaiah, the accumulation of landed pro- proprietors, and Helots, or slaves; and the estates perty in the hands of a few proprietors was so much of the former were little larger than were sufficient on the increase, that a curse was uttered against to supply their respective households with necesthis engrossment. 'Wo unto them,' says the prophet, that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place. that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.'"'46

"Xenophon died at the age of ninety, 359 years before the birth of Christ. The following narra tive of the Greek agriculture is from his Essay,' if not otherwise specified.

saries. We read of princes among them; and as we dwell upon the splendid details of the Trojan war, associate with such titles, unreflectingly, all the pageantry and luxury of modern potentates, The importance and blessings of good husbandry that are distinguished by similar titles. But in this were well understood and thoroughly appreciated we are decidedly wrong; for there was probably by the heathenish but highly civilized and polished not a leader of the Greeks who did not, like the Greeks and Romans. And accordingly, there was, father of Ulysses, assist with his own hands in the in their mythology, no lack of gods and goddesses farming operations." Hesiod is the earliest writer to preside over this important branch of industry. who gives us any detail of the Grecian agriculture. "They attributed to Ceres-as their progenitors, He appears to have been the contemporary of the Egyptians, did to Isis-the invention of the Homer; and, in that case, to have flourished about arts of tilling the soil. Ceres is said to have im-nine centuries before the Christian era. His pracparted these to Triptolemus, of Eleusis, and to have tical statements, however, are very meager; we sent him as her missionary round the world to teach have, therefore, preferred taking Xenophon's Ecomankind the best modes of ploughing, sowing, and nomics as our text, and introducing the statements reaping. In gratitude for this, the Greeks, about of other authors, as they may occur, to supply defi1356 years before the Christian era, established in ciencies or to afford illustrations. honor of Ceres, the Eleusinian mysteries, by far the most celebrated and enduring of all their religious ceremonies; for they were not established at Rome till the close of the fourth century. Superstition is a prolific weakness; and, consequently, "In Xenophon's time the landed proprietor no by degrees, every operation of agriculture, and longer labored upon his farm, but had a steward as every period of the growth of crops, obtained its a general superintendant, and numerous laborers, presiding and tutelary deity. The goddess, Terra, yet he always advises the master to attend to his was the guardian of the soil; Stercutius presided own affairs. My servant,' he says, 'leads my over the manures; Volutia guarded the crops whilst horse into the fields, and I walk thither for the evolving their leaves; Flora received the still more sake of exercise in a purer air; and when arrived watchful duty of sheltering their blossom; they where my workmen are planting trees, tilling the passed to the guardianship of Lactantia when ground, and the like, I observe how every thing is swelling with milky juices; Rubigo protected them performed, and study whether any of these operafrom blight; and they successively became the tions may be improved.' After his ride, his sercare of Hostilina, as they shot into ears; of Ma- vant took his horse, and led him home, ‘taking tura as they ripened; and of Tutelina when they with him,' he adds, to my house, such things as were reaped. Such creations of polytheism are are wanted, and I walk home, wash my hands, and fables; but they are errors that should even now dine off whatever is prepared for me moderately." give rise to feelings of gratification rather than of 'No man,' he says, 'can be a farmer, till he is contempt. They must please by their elegance; taught by experience; observation and instruction and much more when we reflect that it is the con- may do much, but practice teaches many particucurrent testimony of anterior nations, through thou-lars which no master would ever have thought to sands of years, that they detected and acknowledged a Great First Cause.

"Unlike the arts of luxury, Agriculture has never been subject to any retrograde revolutions; being an occupation necessary for the existence of mankind in any degree of comfort, it has always continued to receive their first attention; and no succeeding age has been more imperfect, but in general more expert, in the art than that which has preceded it. The Greeks are not an exception to this rule; for their agriculture appears to have been much the same in the earliest brief notices we have of them, as it was with the nation of which they were an offset. The early Grecians, like all new nations, were divided into but two classes; landed 46 Isaiah, v. 8.

6

6

remark upon.' 'Before we commence the cultiva tion of the soil,' he observes, that, we should notice what crops flourish best upon it; and we may even learn from the weeds it produces, what it will best support.'

"Fallowing, or frequent ploughing in spring or summer,' he observes, 'is of great advantage;' and Hesiod advises the farmer's always to be provided with a spare plough, that no accident may interrupt the operation. The same author directs the ploughman to be very careful in his work. Let him, he says, ' attend to his employment, and trace the furrows carefully in straight lines, not looking around him, having his mind intent upon what he is doing."

47 Homer's Odyss. 1. xxiv. 49 Works and Days, 50. 49 Ibid. 441-443.

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or unseasonably; for the object is to let the earth feel the cold of winter and the sun of summer, to invert the soil, and render it free, light, and clear of all weeds, so that it can most easily afford nourishment."

56

'Theophrastus evidently thought that the soil Cincinnatus, Curius Dentatus, Fabricius, Regulus, could not be ploughed and stirred about too much, and others, distinguished as the most deserving of the Romans, had no larger estates than this. Cincinnatus, according to some authorities, possessed only four acres. On these limited spaces they dwelt, and cultivated them with their own hands. It was from the plough that Cincinnatus was summoned to be dictator;57 and the Samnian ambassadors found Curius Dentatus cooking his own repast of vegetables in an earthen vessel. 58

"Xenophon recommends green plants to be ploughed in, and even crops to be raised for the purpose; for such,' he says, 'enrich the soil as much as dung.' He also recommends earth that "Some of the noblest families in Rome derived has been long under water to be put upon land to their patronymic names from ancestors designated enrich it, upon a scientific principle which we shall after some vegetable, in the cultivation of which explain under IRRIGATION. Theophrastus, who they excelled, as in the examples of the Fabii, flourished in the fourth century B. C., is still more Pisones, Lentuli, Cicerones, and the like. In particular upon the subject of manures. He states those days, when they praised a good man, they his conviction that a proper mixture of soils, as called him an agriculturist and a good husbandman: clay with sand, and the contrary, would produce he was thought to be very greatly honored who crops as luxuriant as could be effected by the was thus praised. As the limits of the empire agency of manures. He describes the properties extended, and its wealth increased, the estates of that render dungs beneficial to vegetation, and the Roman proprietors became very greatly endwells upon composts. 51 Xenophon recommends larged; and, as we shall see more particularly menthe stubble at reaping time to be left long, if the straw is abundant; ' and this, if burned, will enrich the soil very much, or it may be cut and mixed with dung.' 'The time of sowing,' says Xenophon, 'must be regulated by the season; and it is best to allow seed enough.'

"Weeds were carefully eradicated from among their crops; for, besides the hindrance they are to corn, or other profitable plants, they keep the ground from receiving the benefit of a free exposure to the sun and air.' Homer describes Laertes as hoeing, when found by his son Ulysses.52 "Water-courses and ditches were made to drain away 'the wet which is apt to do great damage to

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tioned in our historical notices of gardening, attained to a value of 80,0007.61 Such extensive proprietors let portions of their estates to other citizens, who, if they paid for them a certain rent, like our modern tenants, were called Coloni2 and Politores, or Partiarii, if they shared the produce in stated proportions with the proprietor.63 Leases were occasionally granted, which appear to have been of longer duration than five years.'

1964

Cato, himself an agriculturist, replied to the question, as to what was the first requisite towards good tillage? To plough. What the second? To plough. What the third? To manure. The other requisites, continued he, are to sow plentifully, to choose your seed cautiously, and to remove as "Homer describes the mode of threshing corn many weeds as possible in the season. To this by the trampling of oxen; and to get the grain advice another ancient writer adds: "Nature clear from the straw, Xenophon observes, the has shown to us two paths which lead to a knowmen who have the care of the work take care to ledge of agriculture-experience and imitation.

corn.'

shake up the straw as they see occasion, flinging Preceding husbandmen, by making experiments, into the way of the cattle's feet such corn as they have established many maxims; their posterity geobserve to remain in the straw.' From Theo-nerally imitate them; but we ought not only to phrastus and Xenophon combined, we can also very imitate others, but make experiments, not directed particularly make out that the Greeks separated by chance, but by reason." the grain from the chaff by throwing it with a shovel against the wind."

The Romans were great farmers themselves, and beld the occupation of farming in high estimation and almost the first we hear of this people, was the great attention paid by them to their farms :

54

"When Romulus first partitioned the lands of the infant state among his followers, he assigned to no one more than he could cultivate. This was a space of only two acres. After the kings were expelled, seven acres were allotted to each citizen.55 De Canais Plant. lib. iii. cap. 2, 6. 51 Hist. of Plants, cap. 8. 62 Odyss. xxiv. 226. 53 Iliad xx. lin. 495, &c. Varro, i. 10; Pliny, xvii. 11. 55 Pliny, xviii. 3.

1965

Of what agriculture can do for a country, we have a striking example in the case of England; when Cæsar arrived there, Cicero, in one of his letters, says: "There is not a scruple of money in the Island; nor any hopes of booty, but in slaves." Such have been the improvements in the tillage on that Island, within the last 60 years, that the grain crop has been increased within that time, from one hundred and seventy to three hundred and forty millions of bushels a year. 56 Ibid.; Columella. i. 3, &c. 57 Livy, iii. 26. S8 Plutarch, in vita Cato. Cens. 59 Pliny, xviii. 1. 60 Cato, in Præf. 61 Plutarch in vit. Marius et Lucullus. 62 Columella, i. 7; Pliny, Epist. x. 24. 63 Pliny. Epist. vii, 30, and ix. 37, &c. Ibid, ix, 37. 65 Vano, i. 18.

"When the Saxons established themselves in, had a walk for 100 sheep; and my mother milked the island, an almost total revolution in the pro- thirty kine, &c.'7 But that this class of society prietorship of the lands must have occurred. The was then not very refined, is proved by Sir A. conquest was only accomplished after a bloody Fitzherbert, in his Book of Husbandry, declaring, struggle; and what was won by the sword was con-It is the wife's occupation to winnow all manner sidered to possess an equitable title, that the sword of corn, to make malt, to wash and wring, to make alone could disturb. In those days it was con-hay, to shear corn, and in time of need to help her sidered that the lands of a country all belonged to husband to fill the muckwain, or dung-cart; to drive the king; and on this principle the Saxon monarchs the plough, to load corn, hay, and such other; and gave to their followers whatever districts they to go or ride to the market; to sell butter, cheese, pleased, as rewards for the assistance afforded in milk, eggs, chickens, capons, hens, pigs, geese, and the conquest, reserving to themselves certain por- all manner of corn.' tions, and imposing certain burdens upon each estate granted. This was only a continuance of that feudal system that prevailed upon the Conti

nent.

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"This race of farmers, and this extent of farm, continued much the same till the closing years of the eighteenth century. The wife, indeed, had long previously ceased to participate in the above"As this feudal system declined, and was finally mentioned drudgery, but she still attended the extinguished in the twelfth year of Charles II., so dairy, and sold its products at market, as her husproportionally did the landed interest increase in band still participated in the usual labors of his prosperity. Freed from the burden of furnishing farm; but in the latter half of that century, and a soldier and his armour for every certain number thence to the present time, a different class of men of acres, and all restrictions as to lands changing have engaged in the cultivation of the soil. The hands being removed, and the numerous impositions accumulation of wealth from the vast increase and being got rid of, with which the lords oppressed improvement of manufactures and commerce, the their sub-infeudatories, it soon became a market- diffusion of better information, and the increased able species of property; and, as money and mer-population, have all contributed to this effect. Inchandise increased, and the proprietor lived less dividuals engage in the pursuit, whose education upon his estate, it soon became the most eligible and habits require a larger income for their indulplan for both landlord and tenant, that the whole gence, than can be afforded by the profits of a small rent should be paid in money. farm; and, consequently, in districts having the "Of the size of these early farms we have no most fertile soils, farms of from 300 to 500 acres precise information; but, from the laws of Ina we are very common; whilst in less productive dismay perhaps conclude that a hide of land, equal to tricts they extend even to 1,000 and 2,000 acres. about 100 or 120 acres, was the customary size; With the present expenditure of rent, tithe, taxes, for, in speaking of the produce to be given to the rates, and labor, and the reduced prices of agricul lord for ten hides, the law speaks of the smallest tural produce, farms, even of those extents, cannot division of each county of which it was particu-yield a profit sufficient to support the farmer of relarly cognisant; namely, of ten families, or a fined habits. And if the present artificial system tithing, as they were collectively called. Again, of corn laws is removed, we do not see any possiBede expressly calls a hide of land familia, and says it was sufficient to support a family. It was otherwise called mansum, or manerium, and was considered to be so much as one could cultivate in a year,

ble result but a return to smaller farms, and a more laboring class of tenants; for it admits of perfect demonstration, that small farms, having that manual labor, and that careful tillage which small plots obtain, return a more abundant produce than those which are too large to be so attentively cultivated.

"War succeeded war, and chivalry and the chase were the engrossing occupations of the landed proprietors during the whole of the middle ages; yet, "Enclosure of Land.—It is a rule, founded amid all these convulsions, and all this neglect, agri- upon general observation, that the most enclosed culture continued to obtain a similar degree of at-country is always the best cultivated: for, as Sir tention, and its practitioners to occupy a similarly Anthony Fitzherbert observed, in the reign of humble, yet more independent station of life. Henry VIII., live stock may be better kept, and Bishop Latimer flourished in the first half of the with less attendance, closes be better alternately sixteenth century; and his father was among the cropped, and the crops better sheltered in inclemost respectable yeomen of his time, yet his farm ment seasons, if an acre of land,' he concludes, evidently did not exceed 100 acres. 'My father,'' be worth sixpence an acre before it is enclosed.' says Latimer,' was a yeoman, and had no lands of "We have seen, already, that hedges, ditches. his own; he had only a farm of three or four and other fences, marked the boundaries of the pounds by the year, at the utmost; and hereupon early Saxon estates; and these were certainly not he tilled as much as kept a half a dozen men. He adventitious distinctions, for they are mentioned in # Coke's Littleton, 1. 58. 2; Blackstone's Comm. 45, &c. 67 Latimer's Sermons, p. 30.