CoLENSO. — On Fonr Notable Foreign Plants. 333 



Art. XXXVI. — On Four Notable Foreign Plants. 

 By W. CoLENSO, F.E.S., F.L.S. (Lond.), &c. 



[Read before the Hatvke's Bay Philosophical Institute, 9th October, 



1893.] 



At our July meeting I had the honour of reading to you my 

 paper on two pecuhar yet useful foreign plants that are accli- 

 matised with us here in New Zealand — viz., Agave amcricana 

 and Opuntia ficus-indica. A chief reason for my bringing 

 them to your notice (as I mentioned at the time) was their 

 having been well known to and cultivated by the Aztecs, or 

 ancient Mexican nation, long before their ruthless invasion 

 by the Spaniards in 1519 ; and, in continuing my researches 

 in that same direction, I found other noted plants that 

 were also assiduously cultivated by that ill-used race, which 

 have since become of the highest esteem among ourselves, 

 and are commmonly used by us and by nearly all civilised 

 peoples. 



And here I may {in limine) call your attention to two 

 matters respecting those useful plants that have been so very 

 long in cultivation, or rather, perhaps, I should say, to the 

 ancient races by whom they were cultivated. 



1. That such kind or class of labour — that of the husband- 

 man — is always a sure proof of the antiquity of the civilisation 

 of the people successfully practising it ; for, leaving out the 

 so-called barbaric or Stone Age of man, nothing can be 

 more certain than this : that the proper cultivation of food- 

 crops, wherever found, with all their attendant and necessary 

 labour, must have been handed down from olden times ; 

 yari imssu, I may truly say, with that of building good houses, 

 and vessels for navigation, and all the many useful arts, &c., 

 of life. For such works are not attended to by savage peoples, 

 who live on the wild uncultivated vegetables and fruits of the 

 earth, the spontaneous production of nature, equally with the 

 flesh of the wild animals common to their countries. Indeed, 

 here in New Zealand we have notable instances of this in two 

 races that lived near us — the Tasmanians and the Australians. 

 (I am, I regret to say, obliged to speak of one of these distinct 

 peoples, the Tasmanians, in the past tense, as not one of them 

 now lives, though once numerous ; and all destroyed by civi- 

 lised '•' Christian " man ! and that, too, during my own time.) 

 Especially when we also consider with them the very superior 

 position of the Maoris of this country, whose extensive root- 



