204 MR STARK ON THE SUPPOSED PROGRESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY 



be acquired, from infancy to manhood, from his example and instruction, his 

 knowledge was the immediate gift of God to the first of his creatures.* 



The negative proof, then, of naturalists being unable to refer to any particu- 

 lar country where the Cerealia grow spontaneously, the positive evidence that 

 the wheat and barley of the ancients were precisely of the same species as those 

 now cultivated, and the fact that these grains have never been found wild or 

 growing spontaneously, but in places frequented by man, lead to the conclusion, 

 that the knowledge and cultivation of the Cerealia were coeval with man's exist- 

 ence. It may be mentioned, besides, as strongly indicative of the fact that the 

 Cerealia are nowhere found in quantity but where man has carried them in his 

 progress, that in the Lists of Plants stated as indigenous in the Levant, almost all 

 the genera Triticum and Secale are found ; while in South America, MM. HUM- 

 BOLDT and BONPLAND found no species of wheat (Triticum), and only one species 

 of barley (Hordeum ascendens). This fact would also indicate, that the early 

 wanderers from the Old Continent had been driven thither by accident, or ex- 

 tended their families in circumstances which prevented them from carrying with 

 them the cattle or the grains of their forefathers. Unlike many other plants with 

 a circumscribed geographical range, wheat, barley, oats, and rye, are found in 

 almost every place where there are tribes of men. And it is farther a curious and 

 unaccountable circumstance, except in one view, that these grains are never found 

 in a wild state, available to any extent for the purposes of man. Their continu- 

 ance depends upon their cultivation. Everywhere they are found to die out, if left 

 to the spontaneous care of nature. Even in modern agriculture, and over most 

 of Europe, a change of seed is occasionally necessary to ensure good crops ; and 

 the business of the farmer is a kind of continued experiment upon the soil he cul- 

 tivates, to stop the retrograde tendency of the grains to become less prolific. This 

 remarkable fact verifies in a striking manner the truth of that denunciation passed 

 on the father of our race, " In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread ;" and 

 affords another instance of the coincidence which students of nature are often 

 obliged to remark between what is taught in the Book of Nature, and the Book 

 of Revelation.f 



* The Cerealia seem to be particularly indicated in the following passage of Genesis : " Behold I 

 have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth ;" and to distinguish 

 these seed-bearing herbs from trees, the latter are mentioned by name in what follows : " and every tree 

 in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to you it shall be for meat." (Gen. i. 29.) And connecting 

 this with what is related in a subsequent passage, when the denunciation was passed on our race " In 

 the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, 1 ' it appears almost certain that the Cerealia were known to 



man from his origin. 



t The sire of gods and men, with hard decrees, 



Forbids our plenty to be bought with ease, 

 And wills that mortal man, inured to toil, 

 Should exercise, with pains, the grudging soil. 



VIRGIL, Georg. B. 



