CHAPTER III.

AGRICULTURE.

I. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE.

If we belonged to that happy time when the lively imagination of men took delight in poetical symbols, we might represent civilization under the form of a strong, fair woman, bearing in one hand an ear of corn, in the other a book, the ear providing man with food for maintaining and strengthening the body, the book furnishing him with intellectual and moral nourishment which completes and ennobles his nature, ever hungering for knowledge and progress.

Not without reason, then, were Ceres and Triptolemus, the reputed inventors of the plough and of agriculture, ranked with Orpheus and Amphion as the first instructors of the human race.

When we think of the many and various blessings which result from the tillage of the fields, we easily understand how the ancient Scythians believed, as Herodotus avers, in the divine origin of the plough. Among the primitive inhabitants of Germany the belief was current that the ploughshare fell from heaven, and a temple was raised on the spot where it touched the earth. An old and simple German legend tells us how the daughter of a giant, filled with wonder at the strange sight of a man engaged in ploughing his field, bore away in one of the folds of her dress the pigmy labourer, his plough, and his oxen. The father of the girl was angry with her, and bade her put the earth worm where she had found it, foreseeing that the race of giants must soon die out before the efforts of man's intelligence.

The period of the giants, a race of nomadic shepherds, preceded that of the dwarfs--that is, those who practised agriculture and worked in metals.

The former represent brute force and savage instincts; these belong to the stone age. The dwarfs, on the other hand, their adversaries according to the Germanic legend, are the living symbol of the strife between mind and matter, the earliest pioneers of civilization; they belong to the age of bronze. I need not name the divine labourer of the Chinese, amongst whom agriculture is held in such high honour that the Emperor himself traces each year the first furrow.

There is no tradition, no written history, to tell us at what epoch men began to till the land. Like the child. who retains no remembrance of his earliest years, nations have lost the memory of the successive stages through which they passed before casting off the swaddling clothes of ignorance and barbarism. None of them can tell us the origin of the simplest form of plough, still less the name of its inventor. But where history is silent mythology raises her gentle voice, and infuses into the mind of man those poetic fictions which have come down to us through the ages in place of truth.

In the fulness of time science was born; she penetrates into the virgin forest of the New World, which is perhaps the most ancient, and finds there, among the gigantic ruins of Uxmal or of Palenque, monuments which recall to mind Egypt and its gloomy splendours. She questions the tumuli of the Ohio, the dolmens of Brittany, the long barrows of Scotland, and the ashes of the dead make answer. She searches the cave dwellings of primitive man, she sounds the lakes at the bottom of which he built his early habitations, and she reconstructs from the often mutilated remains which she finds therein a whole world, with its character, its customs, its arts, industry, and agriculture.

In order to discover the first distinct traces of the culture of the fields, we must go back to the time of the builders of the lake cities of the neolithic age. Neither

the dwellers in the caves of the period of the bear or of the reindeer, nor the constructors of the Danish kitchen middens, knew anything of agriculture. In Switzerland, on the other hand, and perhaps in Italy, most of our cereals were already in cultivation before the age of bronze, maize always excepted. Several bushels of barley and wheat were found at Wangen; and Robenhausen has also furnished ears of the same grains, carbonised at the time of the burning of the lake cities, a circumstance to which they owe their preservation. A fact which is especially calculated to excite wonder is that at this remote epoch several varieties of barley and wheat already existed. Thus Professor Heer has distinguished the Triticum vulgare, T. dicoccum and T. monococcum. He recognised also the Hordeum distichum, or doubleranked barley, which is, however, rarer in Switzerland than the Hordeum hexastichum, a variety which is common in the ancient tombs of Greece and Egypt. Among the cereals we must likewise reckon two species of millet, Setaria italica and Panicum miliaceum, which are still used for food in some countries.

Among leguminous plants we find peas, lentils, and the little March bean, Faba vulgaris celtica. The fruit of the wild and cultivated apple trees, pears, plums, sloes, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, hazel nuts, beech nuts, acorns, &c., preserved in rude handturned vessels, formed part of the vegetable food of the earliest inhabitants of Switzerland. We may add to the

list the fruit of a species of plum of the Scotch and marsh firs, of the service tree, of the water chestnut, and even of the yellow water lily.

It has been remarked that the apples and pears were cut in quarters to allow of their being more easily dried. We have not mentioned the walnut in our list of edible fruits it is probable that this tree was already no longer indigenous in Europe, as it was during the epoch of the great mammalia, but had disappeared with the thuya and the liquidambar.

We must not conclude this chapter on agriculture and

its products without saying a few words about the textile plants.

Hemp was unknown, but flax was cultivated by the inhabitants of the lake dwellings. The seed has been found in abundance, and also the nets and woven or plaited tissues manufactured from it. The weaver's loom and shuttle, the spinner's spindle and accessories, such as weights to stretch the thread, &c., already existed. Ropes and cordage were made from twisted linen thread and bark fibre; straw and osiers were used, the former for plaiting, the latter for making baskets and bird-nets for fishing. Agricultural implements, as may be supposed, were of the simplest, resembling those in use among some of the islanders of Polynesia.

MM. Boucher de Perthes, Garrigon, and Filhol have suggested that stags' antlers, deprived of all their branches but one, the lower jawbone of Ursus spelaus, branches of trees forming a more or less open angle, &c., might have served as pickaxes and hoes at a time when the yet virgin soil must have been extremely fertile without the need of deep ploughing.

It is certain that several savage and even cannibal tribes still employ for tilling the soil tools quite as primitive as those used by the earliest inhabitants of Central Europe. The ribs of the whale, or billets of wood shaped like gouges, are used as spades. The clods raised by the piece of wood are broken up with a small roller. Their boe is an oyster or tortoise shell firmly fixed to the end of a stick; a sharp shell serves as a pruning knife. Nonmetallic agricultural tools similar to the spade or shovel have not yet been found in Europe. Sir John Evans has only found in England some flint hoes. But in North America, to the south of the Illinois, and on the banks of the Mississippi, some carved flints of a large size and of unknown date were discovered, which it is surmised were used as spades by the primitive inhabitants. These implements are oval or elliptical in form, flat on one side, slightly convex on the other, with sharp and regularly toothed edges, and measuring more than a foot in length.

by five or six inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick in the middle. Professor Rau has given illustrations and descriptions of similar hoes and shovels also found in North America (Archæological Collection of the United States' National Museum,' by Charles Rau. Washington, 1876. Figs. 54 and 55).

These rude implements are far removed indeed from the reaping machines and steam ploughs of to-day; but this is only an additional proof of the vast progress of humanity.

II. THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS.

When we consider the immense difficulties which primitive man must have encountered in the task of subduing an animal so powerful as the wild bull, so swift as the horse, so fierce as the dog in its natural state, we may well wonder how he could tame these wild creatures, and not only render them useful allies and devoted servants, but also make them trusted friends.

Any conclusion upon questions relating to the domestication of animals is rendered especially difficult on account of the uncertainty under which we labour with regard to the traces of modifications observed upon fossil bones; we cannot tell whether these modifications are natural or due to the intervention of man, since either cause would produce the same effect. Great discrimination is required to divine the real agent; and doubt, error, and uncertainty still reign with regard to many of the questions which we are about to consider.

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It has been well said that animals could exist, and have existed, without man, whereas man could not exist without animals.'

But people are too apt to forget the innumerable difficulties which may have long interfered with the entire subjugation of the animals we now call domestic. Now that the work is accomplished nothing seems to us more simple than domestication, that association between the beast and man, his master, and too often his tyrant.

It is true that there is nothing voluntary in this asso