Excerpt from Agriculture: For Schools of the Pacific Slope Agriculture is the most fundamental of all indus tries, the foundation and condition of civilized exist ence. The naturally growing fruits, roots, and other eatable products of forests and plains and the wild game and fishes of streams and seas are everywhere found to sustain only a roving and more or less savage population, few in numbers and failing to progress from century to century. Agriculture makes it pos sible for thousands to live comfortably where previ ously only a few individuals managed to obtain a scanty living without it; and, as agriculture is improved, still more people are able to live within a given area without warring over the means of existence. Mining and all the other important industries would quickly cease were agriculture to cease even for a short time, as they are sometimes obliged to do in India and else where for lack of rain or irrigation water. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.