B USH-MEDICINES. 277 



nitin delights; and woods, forests, and fields medicinal 

 plants uncounted. " There is more medicine in the bush, 

 and better, than in all the shops in Port of Spain," said 

 a wise medical man to me ; and to the Exhibition of 1862 

 ^Ir. M'Clintock alone contributed, from British Guiana, 140 

 species of barks used as medicine by the Indians. There 

 is therefore no fear that the tropical small farmer should 

 suffer, either from want, or from monotony of food ; and 

 equally small fear lest, when his children have eaten 

 themselves sick as they are likely to do if, like the 

 !N"egro children, they are eating all day long he should be 

 unable to find something in the hedge which will set them 

 all rii^ht a^^ain. 



At the amount of food which a man can get off this 

 little patch I dare not guess. Well says Humboldt, that 

 an Euroj^ean lately arrived in the torrid zone is struck 

 with nothing so much as the extreme smallness of the 

 spots under cultivation round a cabin which contains a 

 numerous family. The plantains alone ought, according 

 to Humboldt, to give 133 times as much food as the 

 same space of ground sown with wheat, and 44 times 

 as much as if it grew potatoes. True, the plantain is by no 

 means as nourishing as wheat : which reduces tlie actual 

 difference between their value per acre to twenty-five to 

 one. But under his plantains he can grow other vegetables. 



