74 USEFUL AMEEICAN PLANTS GEOWN IN EUEOPE. 



exotic and partly by native lierbs and grasses, the value of $22,- 

 000,000 in garden vegetables cliiefiy of European or Asiatic or- 

 igin, and many minor agricultural products.* The number of gal- 

 lons of wine for this year is not yet reported, but there has been 

 a great increase in its production since 18T0, when it was estima- 

 ted at 3,000,000 gallons. 



The weight of this harvest of a year would be many times the 

 tonnage of all the shipping of the United States at the close of 

 the year 1880 — and, with the exception of maple sugar, maple 

 molasses, and the products of the Western prairie lands and of 

 some small Indian clearings, it was all grown upon lands wrested 

 from the forest by the European race within httle more than two 

 hundred years. The wants of Europe have introduced into the 

 colonies of tropical America the sugar-cane,f the coffee-plant, the 

 orange and the lemon, all of Oriental origin, have immensely 

 stimulated the cultivation of the former two in the countries of 

 which they are natives, and, of course, promoted agricultm-al op- 

 erations which must have affected the geography of those regions 

 to an extent proportionate to the scale on which they have been 

 pursued. 



Useful Americmi Plcmts Grown in Europe. 



America has partially repaid her debt to the Eastern continent. 

 Maize and the potato are very valuable additions to the field agri- 

 culture of Europe and the East, 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 legu- 

 minous plants which the European colonists cari-ied with them.ij: 



* Ramie, Boehmeria tenacissima, a species of Chinese nettle producing a fibre 

 whicli may be spun and woven, and which unites many of the properties of 

 silk and of linen, has been completely naturalized in the United States, and re- 

 sults important to the industry of the country are expected from it. 



f The sugar-cane was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain as early 

 as the ninth century, and though it is now scarcely grown in those localities, I 

 am not aware of any reason to doubt that its cultivation might be revived with 

 advantage. From Spain it was carried to the West Indies, though different 

 varieties have since been introduced into those islands from other sources. 



X 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 



