THE PEA- WEEVIL 259 



the birthplace of agriculture, no botanist has ever en- 

 countered the sacred ear growing of itself on unbroken 

 soil. 



Barley, oats, and rye, the turnip and the beet, the 

 beetroot, the carrot, the pumpkin, and so many other 

 vegetable products, leave us in the same perplexity ; their 

 point of departure is unknown to us, or at most suspected 

 behind the impenetrable cloud of the centuries. Nature 

 dehvered them to us in the full vigour of the thing 

 untamed, when their value as food was indifferent, as 

 to-day she offers us the sloe, the bullace, the blackberry, 

 the crab ; she gave them to us in the state of imperfect 

 sketches, for us to fill out and complete ; it was for our 

 skill and our labour patiently to induce the nourishing 

 pulp which was the earliest form of capital, whose 

 interest is always increasing in the primordial bank of 

 the tiller of the soil. 



As storehouses of food the cereal and the vegetable 

 are, for the greater part, the work of man. The funda- 

 mental species, a poor resource in their original state, we 

 borrowed as they were from the natural treasury of the 

 vegetable world ; the perfected race, rich in alimentary 

 materials, is the result of our art. 



If wheat, peas, and all the rest are indispensable to us, 

 our care, by a just return, is absolutely necessary to them. 

 Such as our needs have made them, incapable of resist- 

 ance in the bitter struggle for survival, these vegetables, 

 left to themselves without culture, would rapidly disappear, 

 despite the numerical abundance of their seeds, as the 

 foolish sheep would disappear were there no more sheep- 

 folds. 



They are our work, but not always our exclusive 



