Primitive Agriculture

IT has been justly remarked by Mr. Crawford that "no people ever attained a tolerable degree of civilization who did not cultivate one or other of the higher cereals," and yet, strange to say, the subject of Primitive Agriculture is enveloped in mystery.We know, indeed, that the cultivation of bread-stuffs dates from a most venerable antiquity; that, as the author before quoted says, " The architectural monuments and the letters of Egypt, of ancient Greece, and of Italy, of Assyria, of Northern India, and of Northern China, were all produced by consumers of wheat.The monuments and letters of Southern India, of the Hindu-Chinese countries, of Southern Cbina, of Java, and of Sumatra were the products of a rice-cultivating and rice-consuming people.The architectural monuments of Mexico and Peru, and we have no doubt also of Palenqu6, were produced by the cultivators and consumers of maize."* But, when we ask, as we very naturally do, to what people are we indebted for the origin of agriculture, and where is the native land of the cereals thus so early known, so widely spread, and so successfully cultivated in prehistoric times ?we are met with vague and uncertain responses, even from the most accomplished of ethnologists and botanists.Archeeological records prove that man in his earliest condition was no cultivator of the soil, no keeper of herds and flocks, but a wild and savage hunter, flitting from place to place continually in pursuit of his prey, but, judging from the habits of modern savages, as tribes multiplied it must soon bave been found inconvenient to allow the women and children to accompany the

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