62 TRANSFER OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 
life and to revolutionize the aspect of organic nature ; but some 
of the more important facts bearing on the first branch of this 
subject may pertinently be introduced here. Most of the cereal 
erains, the pulse, the edible roots, the tree fruits, and other im- 
portant forms of esculent vegetation grown in Europe and the 
United States are believed, and—if the testimony of Pliny and 
other ancient naturalists is to be depended upon—many of them 
are historically known, to have originated in the temperate 
climates of Asia. The agriculture of even so old a country as 
Egypt has been almost completely revolutionized by the intro- 
duction of foreign plants, within the historical period. “With 
the exception of wheat,” says Hehn, “the Nile valley now 
yields only new products, cotton, rice, sugar, indigo, sorghum, 
dates,” being all unknown to its most ancient rural husbandry.* 
The wine grape has been thought to be truly indigenous only 
in the regions bordering on the eastern end of the Black Sea, 
where it now, particularly on the banks of the Rion, the ancient 
Phasis, propagates itself spontaneously, and grows with un- 
exampled luxuriance.t But some species of the vine seem 
native to Europe, and many varieties of grape have been too 
long known as common to every part of the United States to 
* On these points see the learned work of Henn, Kultur. Pflanzen und 
Thiere in threm Uebergang aus Asien, 1870. On the migration of plants 
generally, see LYELL, Principles of Geology, 10th ed., vol. ii., ¢. 
+ The vine-wood planks of the ancient great door of the cathedral at 
Ravenna, which measured thirteen feet in length by a foot and a quarter in 
width, are traditionally said to have been brought from the Black Sea, by way 
of Constantinople, about the eleventh or twelfth century. Vines of such 
dimensions are now very rarely found in any other part of the Hast, and, 
though I have taken some pains on the subject, I never found in Syria or in 
Turkey a vine stock exceeding six inches in diameter, bark excluded. Schulz, 
however, saw at Beitschin, near Ptolemais, a vine measuring eighteen inches in 
diameter. Strabo speaks of vine-stocks in Margiana (Khorasan) of such dimen- 
sions that two men, with outstretched arms, could scarcely embrace them. 
See SrRABO, ed. Casaubon, pp. 73, 516, 826. Statues of vine wood are mentioned 
by ancient writers. Very large vine-stems are not common in Italy, but the 
vine-wood panels of the door of the chapter-hall of the church of St. John at 
Saluzzo are not less than ten inches in width, and I observed not long since, in 
a garden at Pid di Mulera, a vine stock with a circumference of thirty inches. 
