On the Culture of Wheat within the Tropics. 231 



about seventeen hundred and twenty-six and a half to nineteen hundred 

 and eighteen English feet only, above the level of the sea, fields of corn 

 mingled with plantations of sugar canes, coffee, and plantains, dependent 

 upon Spain and the United States for the principal part of their wheaten 

 flour. 



The same causes which have operated to the injury of the cereal agri- 

 culture of the province of Venezuela, have operated with increased force 

 in precluding its introduction into the islands of the West Indies, in none 

 of which a trace of its existence is to be found prior to the year 1835, 

 with the exception of the district of Quatro Villas, in the interior of the 

 island of Cuba, where we find extensive fields of wheat successfully culti- 

 vated at an elevation little exceeding that of the level of tlie sea. 



The abolition of slavery, however, in our English islands, conjointly 

 with the increasing cultivation of the cane by which the market price must 

 shortly fall below a remunerating amount, and the equalization of the 

 duties on East and West Indian Sugar, which must ultimately be conceded 

 to the wants and demands of the nation, by removing those dazzling 

 temptations which have hitherto created an injurious prejudice in favour of 

 the cane, the cotton, and other colonial staples, cannot but prove favourable 

 to a fuller development of the natural resources and capabilities of our 

 West Indian islands, and the introduction of new, and hitherto unthought- 

 of objects of colonial agriculture. 



Among these the cultivation of the cerealia will most probably not be 

 the least important, whether we view it as a source of supply for the do- 

 mestic consumption of the colonies themselves, or of exportation to other 

 countries. 



It is, as Humboldt very justly remarks, an error that has hitherto too 

 generally prevailed under the tropics, to consider grain as plants which 

 degenerate on approaching the equator, and to suppose that the harvests 

 are more abundant in the northern climates ; and modern inquiries have 

 shown that, beyond the latitude of 45° the produce of wheat is no where 

 so considerable, as on the northern coasts of Africa, and on the table lands 

 of New Granada, Mexico, and Peru. The return obtained in the vicinity 

 of. la Victoria and San Matheo, is stated by Humboldt to be twenty for 

 one, while the surface of France yields, according to Lavoisier, a mean 

 only of five or six for one. In Jamaica, as we shall presently see, without 

 taking into our estimate the effects of tillering, the return varies at eleva- 

 tions of from two to four thousand feet above the level of the sea, and 

 conse(juently at elevations exceeding those at which wheat is cultivated 

 near la Victoria, by from two hundred and ninety-three to two thousand 

 two hundred and seventy-three feet, a return has been obtained of from 

 fifty-three to fifty-six for one. While the mean temperature of the year 

 throughout its whole extent, even in the arid lands of Venezuela, at an 

 elevation of only five hundred and twelve feet above the level of the sea, 



