328 CULTIVATED PLANTS. Chap. IX. 



useful plant to Australia or the Cape of Good Hope, — countries 

 abounding to an unparalleled degree with, endemic species, — 

 or to New Zealand, or to America south of the Plata ; and, 

 according to some authors, not to America northward of 

 Mexico. I do not believe that any edible or valuable plant, 

 except the canary grass, has been derived from an oceanic or 

 uninhabited island. If nearly all our useful plants, natives 

 of Europe, Asia, and South America, had originally existed 

 in their present condition, the complete absence of similarly 

 useful plants in the great countries just named would be indeed 

 a surprising fact. But if these plants have been so greatly 

 modified and improved by culture as no longer closely to 

 resemble any natural species, we can understand why the 

 above named countries have given us no useful plants, for 

 they were either inhabited by men who did not cultivate the 

 ground at all, as in Australia and the Cape of Good Hope, or 

 who cultivated it very imperfectly, as in some parts of 

 America. These countries do yield plants which are useful 

 to savage man ; and Dr. Hooker 15 enumerates no less than 

 J 07 such species in Australia alone ; but these plants have 

 not been improved, and consequently cannot compete with 

 those which have been cultivated and improved during 

 thousands of years in the civilised world. 



The case of New Zealand, to which fine island we as t yet 

 owe no widely cultivated plant, may seem opposed to this 

 view; for, when first discovered, the natives cultivated 

 several plants ; but all inquirers believe, in accordance with 

 the traditions of the natives, that the early Polynesian 

 colonists brought with them seeds and roots, as well as the 

 dog, which had been wisely preserved during their long 

 voyage. The Polynesians are so frequently lost on the ocean 

 that this degree of prudence would occur to any wandering 

 party : hence the early colonists of New Zealand, like the 

 later European colonists, would not have had any strong 

 inducement to cultivate the aboriginal plants. According to 

 Be Candolle we owe thirty-three useful plants to Mexico, 

 Peru, and Chile; nor is this surprising when we remember 

 the civilized state of the inhabitants, as shown by the fact of 



15 ' Flora of Australia,' Introduction, p. ex. 



