necessary, free from migrations in search of food or for the avoidance of enemies. Hence the earliest civilizations tended to arise in areas which were protected by natural ramparts from the irruption of rival tribes. Egypt had the desert on three sides, and the sea--an impassable barrier to early peoples--on the fourth. The valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris presented similar features. In both areas rich alluvial soil offered a full reward to attempts at agriculture, and the alternation of summer and winter encouraged the making of provision for the non-productive period by the taking advantage of the period of growth: conditions not present under the “endless summer skies” of Tropical lands, where an easy and perennial food-supply tended against the development of industry. The basin of the Mediterranean--the cradle of the earlier Western civilizations from the time of Egypt down to Rome--was, then, also the cradle of European agriculture. These lands, with their wet winters and dry summers, the latter inimical to the development of tree growth, lent themselves to cultivation more readily than the great forest-belt which lay to the northward, sweeping across Europe from Britain to the Urals. Although there is clear evidence that grain was cultivated in Europe as far back as the Neolithic Period (say 7,000 to 5,000 B.C.), it seems established that when Roman agriculture stood at its perfection the peoples to the north were still mainly nomads, dependent for their food-supply on their flocks or on the chase. In Britain, Cæsar found corn grown in Southern England, but the centre and north were largely forest land tenanted by tribes living on flesh and milk, and clothed in skins. The vigorous colonization of the Romans may well have been accountable for the introduction into Britain of many of the farm plants still grown there. The wars of the next fifteen hundred years on the one hand, and the spread of agriculture on the other, caused the steady destruction of the forests, till at length England and Central Europe began to assume their present appearance. The draining of marshes and fens, the enclosing of land, went on steadily, and to a slight extent is going on still; within recent years, the European War has resulted in the disappearance of many of the remaining woods, and in the breaking up of fresh land.