AGRARIAN LAWS (of ancient Rome) (Lat. ager, land), laws which dealt with the disposition of the public land, since it was unconstitutional to gratuitously dispose of the state's property without the consent of the people. Such land was the property of the Roman state by virtue of the conquests, and was used by the Republic as a means of defraying in part the expenses of administration, either through a direct sale, or through the leasing of it to private citizens. Often another object was achieved by means of this property-the satisfaction of the poorer citizens. In such cases, contrary to instances when property was leased out, the state henceforth ceased to have any right in the land. The state availed itself of still another method of disposing of its surplus properties, that is through a gratuitous assignment to an organization a colony, or a settlement. In such cases the ownership passed entirely into the hands of the assignee. In 232

B. C., C. Flaminius enacted a law by means of which tracts of land held by large landowners were redistributed in smaller allotments to the poorer people. Still a third method for providing land for unpropertied people was attempted. In 63 B. C. Servilius Rullus tried to have a law enacted which would have allowed the sale of foreign lands gained through conquests and the purchase of land in Italy with that money, and finally the allotment of this land to the citizens. Cicero's opposition to the bill caused its withdrawal."Great mistakes formerly prevailed on the nature of the Roman laws familiarly termed Agrarian. It was supposed that by these laws all land was declared common property, and that at certain intervals of time the state resumed possession and Imade a fresh distribution to all citizens, rich and poor. It is needless to make any remarks on the nature and consequences of such a law; sufficient it will be to say, what is now known to all, that at Rome such laws never existed, never were thought of. The lands which were to be distributed by Agrarian laws were not private property, but the property of the state. They were, originally, those public lands which had been the domain of the kings, and which were increased whenever any city or people was conquered by the Romans; because it was an Italian practice to confiscate the lands of the conquered, in whole or in part."-H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, bk. 2, ch. 8.-See also ROME: Republic: B. C. 133-121; AGRICULTURE: Modern period: United States: 18331860; IRELAND: 1858-1860; RUSSIA: 1909 (April) and 1916: Condition of peasantry; YUCATAN: 19111918.

AGRARIAN LEAGUE. See GERMANY: 18901894 1895-1898.

AGRARIAN MOVEMENT. See AGRICUL

TURE.

AGRARIAN 1909; FINLAND: 1920. AGRARIAN REFORM: Rumania. See RuMANIA: Break up of large estates.

PARTY. See AUSTRIA: 1006

AGREEMENTS, International: Copyrights, Extradition, etc. See AMERICAN REPUBLICS, INTERNATIONAL UNION OF: 1901-1902; ARBITRATION, INTERNATIONAL; also under specific articles.

AGRI DECUMATES.-"Between the Rhine and the Upper Danube there intervenes a triangular tract of land, the apex of which touches the confines of Switzerland at Basel; thus separating, as with an enormous wedge, the provinces of Gaul and Vindelicia, and presenting at its base no natural line of defence from one river to the other. This tract was, however, occupied, for the most part, by forests, and if it broke the line of the

Roman defences, it might at least be considered impenetrable to an enemy. Abandoned by the warlike and predatory tribes of Germany, it was seized by wandering immigrants from Gaul, many of them Roman adventurers, before whom the original inhabitants, the Marcomanni, or men of the frontier, seem to have retreated eastward beyond the Hercynian forest. The intruders claimed or solicited Roman protection, and offered in return a tribute from the produce of the soil, whence the district itself came to be known by the titl of the Agri Decumates, or Tithed Land. It was not, however, officially connected with any prov ince of the Empire, nor was any attempt mad to provide for its permanent security, till a perio much later than that on which we are now engaged [the period of Augustus]."-C. Merivale. History of the Romans under the empire, ch. 36-"Wurtemburg, Baden and Hohenzollern coincide with the Agri Decumates of the Roman writers. -R. G. Latham, Ethnology of Europe, ch. 8.

AGRICOLA, Georg (1490-1555), founder o modern metallurgy. See SCIENCE: Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

AGRICOLA, Gnaeus Julius (A. D. 37-92) Roman general and statesman; held various posts: commanded a legion in Britain, 70-73; governor of Aquitania, 74-78; of Britain, 78-85; built a wall from the Frith of Forth, to the Frith of Clyde See BRITAIN: A. D. 78-84.

AGRICULTURAL AGENCIES, need of cooperation. See AGRICULTURE: Modern period: United States: Rural policy.

AGRICULTURAL BANKS. See RURAL

AGRICULTURAL

EXPANSION IN UNITED STATES. See AGRICULTURE: Modern period: United States: 1860-1888: Expansion after the Civil War.

AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. See EDUCATION, AGRICULTURAL: United States.

AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION WORK. See EDUCATION, AGRICULTURAL: United States: Sta tistics of agricultural colleges.

AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS, I provement of. See AGRICULTURE: Modern peried United States: 1860-1888: Expansion after the Civi War.

AGRICULTURAL LAND BILL. See ENG LAND: 1896.

AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS. See EDUCA TION, AGRICULTURAL.

AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES, associationfor the promotion of agricultural science and knowledge, composed of farmers and other interested persons. Agricultural associations were first formed in the middle of the eighteenth century, some of the most important now in existence dating from that time. In recent years the tendency has been to form agricultural associations not only for purposes of education and research, but als in order to assist the farmer directly through co operation.

A list of the most important agricultural societies is appended:

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been made. A longer or shorter succession of local and short-lived experiments must have occurred before such a display, which is calculated to impress an already numerous public. It is easy to understand that there must have been determining causes to excite these attempts, to renew them, to make them successful. The first cause is that such or such a plant, offering some of those advantages which all men seek, must be within reach. The lowest savages know the plants of their country; but the example of the Australians and Patagonians shows that if they do not consider them productive and easy to rear, they do not entertain the idea of cultivating them. Other conditions are sufficiently evident: a not too rigorous climate; in hot countries, the moderate duration of drought; some degree of security and settlement; lastly, a pressing necessity, due to insufficient resources in fishing, hunting, or in the production of indigenous and nutritious plants, such as the chestnut, the datepalm, the banana, or the bread fruit tree. When men can live without work it is what they like best. Besides, the element of hazard in hunting and fishing attracts primitive, and sometimes civilized, man more than the rude and regular labor of cultivation. . . . The various causes which favor or obstruct the beginnings of agriculture explain why certain regions have been for thousands of years peopled by husbandmen, while others are still inhabited by nomadic tribes. It is clear that, owing to their wellknown qualities and to the favorable conditions of climate, it was at an early period found easy to cultivate rice and several leguminous plants in Southern Asia, barley and wheat in Mesopotamia and in Egypt, several species of Panicum [millet and other grains] in Africa, maize, the potato, the sweet potato, and manioc in America. Centers were thus formed whence the most useful species were diffused. In the north of Asia, of Europe, and of America the climate is unfavorable and the indigenous plants are unproductive; but as hunting and fishing offered their resources, agriculture must have been introduced there late, and it was possible to dispense with the good species of the south without great suffering. It was different in Australia, Patagonia, and even in the south of Africa. They were out of reach of the plants of the temperate region in our hemisphere, and the indigenous species were very poor. It is not merely the want of intelligence or security that has prevented the inhabitants from cultivating them. Europeans established in these countries for a hundred years have cultivated only a single species, and that an insignificant green vegetable.

"The ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians propagated many plants in the region of the Mediterranean, and the Aryan nations, whose migrations toward Europe began about 2500, or at latest 2000 B. C., carried with them several species already cultivated in Western Asia. Some plants were probably cultivated in Europe and in the north of Africa prior to the Aryan migration. This is shown by names in languages more ancient than the Aryan tongues; for instance, Finn, Basque, Berber, and the speech of the Guanches of the Canary Isles. However, the remains, called kitchen middens, of ancient Danish dwellings have hitherto furnished no proof of cultivation or any indication of the possession of metal. This absence of metals does not in these northern countries argue a greater antiquity than the age of Pericles, or even the palmy days of the Roman republic. Later, when bronze was known in Sweden a region far removed from the then civilized countries agriculture had at length been intro

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duced. Among the remains of that epoch was found a carving of a cart drawn by two oxen and driven by a man. The ancient inhabitants of Eastern Switzerland, at a time when they possessed instruments of polished stone and no metals, cultivated several plants, some of which were of Asiatic origin. The remains of the Lake-dwellers of Austria prove likewise a completely primitive agriculture: no cereals have been found at Laibach and only a single grain of wheat at the Mondsee. The backward condition of agriculture in this eastern part of Europe is contrary to the hypothesis, based on a few words used by ancient historians, that the Aryans sojourned first in the region of the Danube. In spite of this example, agriculture appears in general to have been more ancient in the temperate parts of Europe than we should be inclined to believe from the Greeks, who were disposed to attribute the origin of all progress to their own nation.

"In America agriculture is perhaps not quite so ancient as in Asia and Egypt, if we are to judge from the civilization of Mexico and Peru, which does not date even from the first centuries of the Christian era. [See PERU: Empire of the Incas: 1200-1527.] However, the widespread cultivation of certain plants, such as maize, tobacco, and the sweet potato, argues a considerable antiquity, perhaps two thousand years or thereabouts. History is at fault in this matter and we can only hope to be enlightened by the discoveries of archæology and geology. Men have not discovered and cultivated within the last two thousand years a single species which can rival maize, rice, the sweet potato, the potato, the breadfruit, the date, cereals, millets, sorghums, the banana, soy. These date from three, four, or five thousand years, perhaps even in some cases six thousand years. The species first cultivated dur ing the Græco-Roman civilization and later. nearly all answer to more varied or more refined needs. A great dispersion of the ancient species from one country to another took place, and at the same time a selection of the best varieties developed in each species. . . . The peoples of Southern and Western Asia innovated in a certain degree by cultivating the buckwheats, several cucurbitaceæ [cucumbers, melons, etc.], a few alliums [garlic, chives, leek], etc. In Europe, the Romans and several peoples in the Middle Ages introduced the cultivation of a few vegetables and fruits, and that of several fodders. In Africa, a few species were then first cultivated separately After the voyages of Vasco da Gama and of Columbus a rapid diffusion took place of the species already cultivated in either hemisphere. These transports continued during three centuries without any introduction of new species into cultivation. We must come to the middle of the present [19] century to find new cultures of any value from the utilitarian point of view, such as the Eucalyptus globulus of Australia and the Cinchonas of South America."-A. P. De Candolle. Beginnings of plant cultivation (E. G. Nourse, Agricultural economics, pp. 23-27).

Tree and vine culture.-"Wherever the cultivation of the three . . . plants-the vine, the fix. and the olive-was prosecuted on a large scale. there the face of the country and the habits and manners of the people were of necessity changed Tree-culture was one step more on the path to settled habitations; with and by it men first became permanently domiciled. The transition from a nomadic to a settled life has nowhere been sudden; it was always accomplished in many intermediate stages, at each one of which the shepherd

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hastily sows a piece of ground, from which he as hastily gathers the ensuing harvest; next spring he chooses another and fresh piece, which is no sooner stripped of its spoils than he neglects it in turn. When a tribe has settled on some especially fertile spot, building fragile huts, there too the soil is exhausted in a few years; the tribe breaks up its quarters, loads its animals and waggons with its movable goods, and goes on to new ground. Even when such a settlement has become more permanent, the idea of individual right to the ground is not yet realized. The cultivated land, of which there is an abundance in comparison to the scanty population, is common property like the pastures, and is divided anew among the people every year. Such was the condition of the Germans in the time of Tacitus, and this is the plain meaning of that historian's words, which have been carefully explained in a contrary and more welcome sense by patriotic commentators. The communistic, half-nomadic form of civilization, which was closely connected with ancient patriarchal life, still prevails in many parts of Russia, among the Tartars, Bedouins, and other races. During this first stage of agriculture, cattlebreeding is still the principal occupation, milk and flesh are the staple food, roving and plunder the ruling passion. The huts or houses are lightly built of wood, and easily take fire; the plough is nothing but a pointed branch guided by slaves taken in war, and only slightly scratches the ground; the foresight of the community is very short, extending only from spring to autumn. The sowing of seed in winter is a considerable advance, but the decisive step is taken when the Culture of Trees commences. Then only arises the feeling of a settled home and the idea of property. For a tree requires nursing and watering for many years before it will bear fruit, after which it yields a harvest every year, while the covenant with the innual 'grass' which Demeter taught men to sow is at an end the moment the grain is gathered. A hedge, the sign of complete possession, is raised to protect the vineyard or the orchard; for the mere husbandman a boundary stone had been sufficient. The sown field must wait for dew and rain, but the tree-planter teaches the mountain rivulet to wind round his orchards, and in so doing gets involved in questions of law and property with his neighbours-questions that can only be solved by a fixed political organization. One of the oldest political documents with which we are acquainted, the treaty sworn to by the Delphic Amphictyons, contains a decree that 'running water shall not be cut off from any of the allied cities either in peace or in war.'"-V. Hehn, Cultivated plants and domestic animals.

Domestic animals. "In the East and around the Mediterranean, wherever the summers are rainless, vegetation was threatened with destruction by drought during the three or four hot months of every year. In these countries, therefore, from the earliest times, the art of irrigation, the banking and diverting of streams, their horizontal distribution, the digging of canals, the making of dams and bores, of water-wheels and wells, were practised. So necessary was all this labour under the sunny skies, that it was continued from generation to generation until it became a second nature and innate skill. And as the art of irrigation was originally a sign of awakening reason, it also became a powerful stimulant to further mental development. It bound man to man, not by the stupid natural gregariousness common to beasts, but by free reciprocity, the first germ of all communities and states. . . . When the great Aryan

AGRICULTURE, ANCIENT

Migration brought the first inhabitants of a higher race, that we are historically acquainted with, into the two peninsulas which afterwards became the scene of classic culture, those lands (we may imagine) were covered with thick, impenetrable forests of dark firs and evergreen ilexes, or deciduous oaks... interspersed in the river valleys with more open stretches of meadow land, grazed by the herds of the newcomers, and with many a naked or grass-grown precipice, climbed by the nibbling sheep, from whose summits here and there could be seen the waste, unfruitful sea. The swine found plenteous nourishment in the abundant acorns, the dog guarded the flocks, wild honey-combs furnished wax and honey, wild apple, pear, and sloe trees afforded a hard, sour fruit; at the stag and boar, wild ox and ravening wolf the arrow sped from the bow, or the sharp, stonetipped spear was hurled. Game and domestic animals furnished all that was needed: skins for clothing, horns for drinking vessels, sinews and entrails for bow-strings, bones for tools and their handles. Raw hides were the principal material, and needles of bone or horn served to stitch them together. The osier boat was covered with hide, and the leathern coat was sewed together with the sinews of bulls. . . . From the bark of trees, especially of the lime tree, and from the fibres of the stalks of many plants, principally of the nettle kind, the women plaited (plaiting is a very ancient art, the forerunner of weaving, which it nearly resembles) mats and web-like stuffs, hunting and fishing nets. Milk and flesh were the staple food, and salt a favourite condiment, but difficult to procure, and sought for on the seashore and in the ashes of plants. The farther south the easier it became to winter the cattle, which up in the north found but scanty nourishment beneath the snow, and in severe seasons must have perished wholesale; for the sheltering of cattle and the storing of dried grass against the winter are inventions of later origin, that followed in the wake of a somewhat advanced husbandry. The domestic animals were of poor breed. The pig, for example, was the small so-called peatpig (torf-swine), far inferior to the animal now improved by cultivation and commerce. In winter the human dwelling-place was a hole in the ground, artificially dug, and roofed over with turf or dung; in summer it was the waggon itself, or, in the woods, a light tent-like hut, made of branches and wicker work. . . . The noble horse, the darling and companion of the hero, the delight of poets (witness the splendid descriptions in the Book of Job and in Homer's Iliad)—that glossy, proud, aristocratic, quivering, nervous animal, with its rhythmic action-has his home nevertheless in one of the wildest and most inhospitable regions of the world-the steppes and pasturelands of Central Asia, the realm of storms. There, we are assured, the wild horse still roams under the name of Tarpan, which tarpan cannot always be distinguished from the only half-wild Musin, or fugitive from tame or half-tame herds. It grazes in troops, under a wary leader, always moving against the wind, nostrils and ears alert to every danger, and not seldom struck by a wild panic which drives it full speed across the immeasurable plain. During the terrible winter of the steppes, it scrapes the snow away with its hoofs, and scantily feeds on the dead grasses and leaves which it finds beneath. It has a thick, flowing mane and bushy tail, and when the winter cold commences, the hair all over its body grows into a kind of thin fur. And in this very region lived the first equestrian races of whom we have

any knowledge-in the east the Mongols, in the west the Turks; taking those names in their widest sense. . . . That the horse in its original wildness also roamed westward of Turkestan, over the steppes of the present South-eastern and Southern Russia, and to the foot of the Carpathians, seems likely enough; not so likely that even the forest region of Central Europe once abounded in troops of that animal. And yet much historical testimony seems to put the fact beyond a doubt. Varro speaks of Spanish wild horses; and Strabo writes, 'In Iberia there are many deer and wild horses.' Wild horses as well as wild bulls lived among the Alps, as we learn again from Strabo; and Pliny tells us, not only in the Alps but in the north generally. Nor are the Middle Ages wanting in proofs of the existence of wild horses in Germany and the countries east of Germany. At the time of Venantius Fortunatus the onager-under which name may be understood the wild horse-was hunted in the Ardennes, as well as bears, stags, and wild boars. In Italy wild horses were seen for the first time during the rule of the Longobards, under King Agilulf. ... If wild horses were thus found in the cultivated west and south of Germany, they must have existed still longer in the wild country on the Baltic, in Poland and Russia. In fact, we find innumerable proofs of this down to modern times. At the time of Bishop Otto of Bamberg, in the first half of the twelfth century, Pomerania was rich in all kinds of game, including wild oxen and horses. At the same period wild horses are mentioned as extant in Silesia, whence Duke Sobeslaus in 1132 'carried away many captives, and herds of wild mares not a few.' It is known, and is confirmed by many literary allusions, that till the time of the Reformation, and even later, the woods of Prussia were inhabited by wild horses. . . . Turning from the European chase to the steppes of Asia, the true home of the wild horse, we meet with the important fact, that the farther a country lies from this point of departure, the later is the appearance of the horse and its historical mention in that country, and the more clearly are the modes of breeding the animal seen to be derived from neighbouring nations to the east and north-east of it. In Egypt, to begin with the remotest member, no figure of a horse or of a war-chariot has ever been found under the socalled 'old kingdom.' It is only when the period of the Shepherd Kings is over, and the eighteenth dynasty with its campaigns has commenced (abcut 18co B. C.), that we find both pictorial representations and the first mention in the papyri (so far as they have been deciphered) of the horse and of war-chariots equipped in Asiatic fashion.

As to the time when the horse became known to the Semites of Western Asia, we are limited to the evidence of the Old Testament-the Pentateuch, the Book of Joshua, etc; but when were these books written? There is not a piece in this collection that does not consist of different parts, or that has not passed through the hands of successive revisers. . . . Descriptions of the horse are not wanting in the so-called books of Moses, nor in the historical books ... But in these descriptions the horse is never mentioned as a domesticated animal; it has no share in the wanderings and battles of the Children of Israel; it is the warlike servant of their neighbours and enemies, prancing and stamping before the war chariot or beneath the rider As a war horse, and as such only, it is also celebrated in the fine description in the Book of Job In the household its place is taken by the ass Thou shalt not covet,' says

the Decalogue, the commands of which were derived from a relatively very ancient period, 'thy neighbour's wife, . . . nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.' The horse, the chief object of rapine among mounted nomads, is here, very significantly, never mentioned. . . . We are told later that King Josiah abolished, among other heathen abominations, the horses and chariots that were sacred to the sun-this was a feature of the Iranian worship of the sun introduced from Media. . . . Nowhere in the Old Testament do we find horses accompanying the shepherds of the Arabian desert; those people travel only with camels and asses, and the mode of warfare in the despotic kingdoms from the Tigris to the Nile is unknown to them. Quite in agreement with the above is the fact that the Arabs in the army of Xerxes rode only on camels. Herodotus writes, "The Arabs were all mounted on camels, which yielded not to horses in swiftness.' And Strabo informs us that in Arabia Felix there were neither horses nor mules: 'There is a superfluity of domestic animals and herds, with the exception of horses, mules, and swine.'"-V. Hehn, Cultivated plants and domestic animals, pp. 26, 30-32, 35, 37-38,

40-42.

"If we take all the above data together, we find that nowhere in Europe, neither among the classic nations of the south, nor the North-European nations from the Celts in the west to the Slavs in the east, is the high antiquity of the horse and of its subjugation to man betrayed by any clear traces or undoubted evidence. Many facts, indeed, seem positively to exclude any acquaintance with the animal in early times; for instance. ! the fact of the Homeric Greeks not riding, as they must have done had they possessed the animal from the first, but only driving, as they had seen the Asiatics do. We have therefore no ground for imagining the Indo-Germans (Aryans) in their earliest migrations as a horse-riding people, galloping over Europe with loose rein, and catching men and animals with horse-hair lasso. But if the horse did not then accompany them on their great march through the world, it must have been the Iranian branch, which remained near the original point of departure, that learnt the art of riding later; and from whom did they learn it if not from the Turks, who dwelt next behind them, and in course of time drew nearer and nearer? Contemporaneous with the adoption of the novel culture, because closely connected with it, were the introduction of the Ass, the breeding of Mules, and the propagation of the Goat. The patient, hardworking, and intelligent Ass, which obediently fulfilled many domestic duties-driving the mill and the draw-well; carrying baskets full of earth to the hills; and accompanying its master to market and feast, leaded with the produce of the soil--had no need of fat meadows, shady trees, and ample space like the ox; it was content with what came first, the way-side herb, the refuse of the table, with straw, twigs, thistles, and brambles That the ass came to Greece from Semitic Asia Minor and Syria-though its original home may have been Africa, where its relations still liveis taught us by the history of language, and confirmed by the oldest known conditions of nations and culture. In the epic time, when cattle-breeding and agriculture were the chief occupations, the ass had not yet become a common domestic animal; it is only mentioned once in the Iliad, and that only in a simile invented and inserted by a poet who was prejudiced against the Slaminians and Athenians, the simile is paradoxical and awkwards paired with the one preceding In the