76 EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLES. 
must have affected the geography of those regions to an extent 
proportionate to the scale on which they have been pursued. 
Useful American Plants grown in Europe. 
America has partially repaid her debt to the Eastern conti- 
nent. Maize and the potato are very valuable additions to. the 
field agriculture of Europe and the Hast, and the tomato is no 
mean gift to the kitchen gardens of the Old World, though 
certainly not an adequate return for the multitude of esculent 
roots and leguminous plants which the European colonists 
carried with them.* I wish I could believe, with some, that 
America is not alone responsible for the introduction of the 
filthy weed, tobacco, the use of which is the most vulgar and 
pernicious habit engrafted by the semi-barbarism of modern 
civilization upon the less multifarious sensualism of ancient 
life; but the alleged occurrence of pipe-like objects in old 
Sclavonic, and, it has been said, in Hungarian sepulchres, is 
hardly sufficient evidence to convict those races of complicity 
in this grave offence against the temperance and the refinement 
of modern society. 
Extirpation of Vegetables. 
Lamentable as are the evils produced by the too general 
felling of the woods in the Old World, I believe it does not 
appear that any species of native forest tree has yet been 
* John Smith mentions, in his Historie of Virginia, 1624, pease and beans 
as having been cultivated by the natives before the arrival of the whites, and 
there is no doubt, I believe, that several common cucurbitaceous plants are of 
American origin; but most, if not all the varieties of pease, beans, and other 
pod fruits now grown in American gardens, are from European and other 
foreign seed. 
Cartier, A.D. 1585-6, mentions ‘‘ vines, great melons, cucumbers, gourds 
[courges], pease, beans of various colors, but not like ours,” as common 
among the Indians of the banks of the St. Lawrence.—Bref Lecit, etc., re- 
print. Paris, 1863, pp. 18, a; 14, b; 20, b; 31, a. 
