OBJECTS OF MODERN COMMERCE. 63 
admit of the supposition that they were introduced by European 
colonists.* 
Objects of Modern Commerce. 
It is an interesting fact that the commerce—or at least the 
maritime carrying trade—and the agricultural and mechanical 
industry of the world are, in very large proportion, dependent 
on vegetable and animal products little or not at all known to 
ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish civilization. In many 
instances, the chief supply of these articles comes from coun- 
tries to which they are probably indigenous, and where they are 
still almost exclusively grown; but in most cases, the plants or 
animals from which they are derived have been introduced by 
man into regions now remarkable for their successful cultiva- 
tion, and that, too, in comparatively recent times, or, in other 
words, within two or three centuries. 
Something of detail on this subject cannot, I think, fail to 
prove interesting. Pliny mentions about thirty or forty oils as 
known to the ancients, of which only olive, sesame, rape seed 
and walnut oil-—for except in one or two doubtful passages I 
find in this author no notice of linseed oil—appear to have been 
used in such quantities as to have had any serious importance 
in the carrying trade. At the present time, the new oils, linseed 
oil, the oil of the whale and other large marine animals, 
petroleam—of which the total consumption of the world in 
1871 is estimated at 6,000,000 barrels, the port of Philadelphia 
* The Northmen who—as I think it has been indisputably established by 
Professor Rafn of Copenhagen—visited the coast of Massachusetts about the 
year 1000, found grapes growing there in profusion, and the wild vine still 
flourishes in great variety and abundance in the southeastern counties of 
that State. The townships in the vicinity of the Dighton rock, supposed by 
many—with whom, however, I am sorry I cannot agree—to bear a Scandi- 
navian inscription, abound in wild vines. According to LAUDONNIERE, Histoire 
Notable dela Floride, reprint, Paris, 1853, p 5, the French navigators in 1562 
found in that peninsula ‘‘ wild vines which climb the trees and produce good 
grapes.” 
