IV 



choice of food, as applicable from the strength of their 

 fibres to clothing or to cordage^ or to our stock of usefui 

 medicines, will be received with satisfaction. It cannot 

 be too well remembered that plants which in their natural 

 state are most noxious, become harmless and even grateful 

 under skilful culture : and that others require the aid of 

 man only, to increase indefinitely the nutritive matter, 

 which, in a wild state is scarcely traceable in them. Thus 

 it is, that the most useful grains of wheat, rye, and barley 

 have, from culture probably, (for their origin is lost in the 

 depths of antiquity,) swollen into bulk, and have become 

 the deposits of a greatly increased quantity of farinaceous 

 matter ; and the bitter and scanty root of the potato, as it 

 is found in its natural state, is enlarged to its present 

 dimensions, and has lost all its disagreeable qualities. Our 

 finest fruits, in all their rich variety, have arisen from 

 origins equally simple and unpromising; all the varieties 

 of the grape have no doubt originated from a common 

 stock, and that, austere and anything but grateful to the 

 taste. It is probable that we are even yet but in the infancy 

 of our knowledge of the extent and of the variety to which 

 analogous products may hereafter arrive, so that, to select 

 one among innumerable instances, it does not appear to be 

 improbable that such a plant as the well known Indian 

 rice {Zizania aqiiatica) even now the occasional resource 

 of the aborigines, may hereafter become an abundant source 

 of aliment : rivalling in these cold latitudes, its analogue of 

 the tropics. 



The remark applied to this one plant may be extended 

 very widely, and to objects at present very little suspectecV 

 to be capable of becoming useful; — the reference is made 

 solely by way of illustration of a most important truth. 



