Egypt, had large cattle from very early times. North Syria seems to
dispute with Babylonia priority in the production of wheat. Somewhere
in this region we may provisionally place the cradle of what I may
perhaps describe as the Bread-and-Cheese culture, in which the staple
foods are provided by grain-plants and cattle, the latter being valued
for their strength and their milk products, but not primarily for their
flesh.

Disseminated westward, the Bread-and-Cheese culture is found to suffer
regional modification. Southward, among the Mediterranean evergreen
flora and old hoe-cultivation, the dearth of summer grass makes the
large cattle useless for milking, as well as for beef; they are bred
exclusively for draught, as their gait and structure show, and while
cheese is supplied by the sheep and goats, butter and animal-fats are
replaced by the vegetable oils, of which the olive is the chief, a
characteristic Mediterranean product, evergreen, deep-rooted against
summer drought, and fleshy-fruited. A Bread-and-Olive culture results,
familiar to all visitors to Mediterranean lands. In the deciduous
forests of South-Central Europe there is grass in the clearings, and
milk enough; but goats and sheep are restricted, as the undergrowth
becomes deeper and denser, and the prime giver of fats is the
forest-bred pig: in a land rolling with ham and sausages we reach the
Bread-and-Bacon culture. Further afield still, and later, in proportion
as the forest is opened out by semi-pastoral folk, the moister summer
permits open meadow-land, with perennial grass, and the possibility of
hay. Here too the grain crops may be so large that there is something
over to fatten stock; and to Bread and Cheese the farmer of the
north-western plains adds Beef. When there is coarse grain in plenty, of
course, the large-boned horse of the north gradually replaces the ox at
the plough, and permits him to be bred, as with ourselves, not for