The next sops. in the progressive improvement of the arts necessary for subsistence, is the introduction of agriculture, when men, having become well acquaint ed with the various productions of the earth, and hav ing distinguished those which afford the best and most agreeable nourishment, are led to endeavour to increase their quantity, and improve their quality by cultivation. "It is," says the president de Goguet, (to whom we are indebted for a great part of the preceding state ments,) "to the discovery of agriculture, that we owe that prodigious variety of arts and sciences which we now enjoy. As long as mankind had no other way of subsisting but by hunting, fishing, and feeding their flocks, arts made little prog-ess. That mode of life obliged them frequently to remove from place to place, and did not require the knowledge of many arts. Those nations who do not practise agriculture, have still but a very slender acquaintance with the arts and sciences. But the cultivation of the earth obliged those who applied themselves to it to fix in a certain place, and to invent the various arts, of which they now felt the want." Origin of Laws, Sze. part I. b. 2.
We shall not take up the time of our readers with an examination of the various improvements which agricul ture, that most useful of all the arts, has undergone in successive ages ; but content ourselves with making some observations on the art of making bread, a curi ous, and by no means obvious discovery, and the great practical purpose to which all the toils of husbandry are directed.
However familiar the aliment of bread is to us at pre sent, we must not suppose that the art of preparing it was either very quickly or easily found out. Several nations who had corn, did not for a long time know the means of converting it into meal, much less the method of converting that meal into bread. How many exten sive regions are there still, in both continents, where, though they have grain, the use of bread remains quite unknown ? The difference between bread and corn in its natural state, is prodigious ; and it is in some mea sure difficult to conceive how the various steps of the process, by which this artificial preparation is made, should have occurred to men. It is, however, for no other purpose but obtaining bread, that whole nations now devote themselves to the toils of husbandry, which the more unthinking savage despises as a painful and ignoble course of life.
The following appear to have been the progressive steps, by which the art of making bread was invented, or rather discovered a second time, by those families, who, in their wandering state, after the confusion of tongues, lost all tincture of this and every other art. They began, says Hippocrates and Theophrastus, with eating the grain as nature produced it, without any pre paration. According to Possidonius, (apud Senec. ep. 91.) a very ancient and eminent philosopher, this alone, when duly attended to, was sufficient to suggest the idea of converting corn into bread. They must have ob served, says he, that the grains were first bruised by the teeth, then diluted by the saliva ; and being wrought and kneaded by the tongue, passed into the stomach, where they were properly heated before they were con verted into nourishment. They imitated the action of
the teeth, by bruising the grain between two stones ; they then mixed the meal with water, and by stirring and kneading that mixture, they formed it into, paste, which they baked by exposing it to the fire, or putting it into hot ashes.
This-account of the matter is ingenious ; but it is not probable that the process of making bread was so readily suggested as this. All the preparation that corn seems to have received from men in the savage state, was a little broiling or boiling, which they would be led to, both in order to render it more savoury, and to separate more easily the grain from the chaff. Herodotus informs us, that such was the practice in his time, with several nations in India, (1. 3. s. 100.) ; and such is the method pursued in our own clays, by several savage tribes, in preparing their grain, (Meeurs. des Sauv. t. 2.) The constant lood of the Greeks and Romans, in the earliest ages, was grain steeped in hot water, by which it was swelled and soitened, and rendered more palat5ble. Parching or drying by the heat of the fire, was another mode of preparation, very commonly practised in an cient times, and still prevalent among uncivilized tribes. This serves the useful purpose of preserving grain for a long time, and reduces it to a state in which it forms not unpleasant food. In Ethiopia, travellers commonly carry no other provisions with them but parched barley ; and the North American Indians, during their predatory excursions, subsist for weeks upon parched maise. Barley, it is generally supposed, was the first kind of grain that men used for food, (Plin. 1. 18. s. 14.) ; and when prepared according to any of these methods, it affords wholesome nourishment, and is by no means un pleasant to the taste.
It would soon appear that grain is much improved by being bruised, or pulverised. The grains of barley are involved in a coat, or interior husk, of which they cannot be stripped but by this method. Beating between two stones, was very probably the mode of grinding at first employed ; but mills of some construction or other are a very ancient invention. Job speaks of the millstone, (c. xli. v. 15.); and Moses alludes very plainly to this machine, when he forbids the Israelites to take the up per or nether millstone in pledge, (Deut. c. xxiv. v. 6.) The ancient mills, however, were probably very simple in their structure ; and consisted of nothing more than the two stones, with some obvious contrivance for ma king the one revolve upon the other. Some of the hand mills, used in the remote parts of Europe, are not of a more artificial contrivance at the present day. Accord ing to Pliny, the Greeks, Romans, and many other an cient nations, for a long time knew no other method of converting corn into meal, than by pounding it in mortars of wood or stone, (1. xviii. s. 23.) Various tribes, even in ouown days, have no other machines for this purpose.