FOREIGN PLANTS, HOW INTRODUCED. 65 
ing, however, by any means, exclusively of articles new to com- 
™“ 
merce.* 
Foreign Plants, how Introduced. 
Besides the vegetables I have mentioned, we know that many 
plants of smaller economical value have been the subjects of 
international exchange in very recent times. Busbequius, Aus- 
trian ambassador at Constantinople about the middle of the 
sixteenth century—whose letters contain one of the best 
accounts of Turkish life which have appeared down to the 
present day—brought home from the Ottoman capital the lilae 
and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same time intro- 
duced from the East the horse chestnut, which has since 
wandered to America. The weeping willows of Europe and 
the United States are said to have sprung from a slip received 
have been found in the remains of ancient Rome, show that the Imperial 
capital must have employed an immense amount of tonnage in the importation 
of heavy articles for which there could have been no return freight, unless in 
the way of military transportation. Some of the Egyptian obelisks at Rome 
weigh upwards of four hundred tons, and many of the red granite columns 
from the same country must have exceeded one hundred tons. Greek and 
African marbles were largely used not only for columns, entablatures, and 
solid walls, but for casing the exterior and veneering the interior of public 
and private buildings. Scaurus imported, for the scene alone of a temporary 
theatre designed to stand scarcely for a month, three hundred and sixty 
columns, which were disposed in three tiers, the lower range being forty-two 
feet in height.—See Purny, Nat. Hist., Lib. xxxvi. 
Italy produced very little for export, and her importations, when not consist- 
ing of booty, were chiefly paid for in coin which was principally either the 
spoil of war or the fruit of official extortion. 
* Many of these articles would undoubtedly have been made known to the 
Greeks and Romans and have figured in their commerce, but for the slowness 
and costliness of ancient navigation, which, in the seas familiar to them, was 
suspended for a full third of the year from the inability of their vessels to cope 
with winter weather, The present speed and economy of transportation haye 
wrought and are still working strange commercial and industrial revolutions, 
Algeria now supplies Northern Germany with fresh cauliflowers, and in the early 
spring the market-gardeners of Naples find it more profitable to send their first 
fruits to St. Petersburg than to furnish them to Florence and Rome. 
3) 
