ON THE MIGRATION OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 331 
asserted, ever invented letters, or constructed a durable architecture. 
Among the Malays, whose bread is rice, the term “ root-eater ” is one 
of reproach, equivalent to savage. When the inhabitants of the cele- 
brated Spice Islands were first seen by Europeans, their only bread 
was sago, or the pith of palms; and notwithstanding the possession, 
even the natural monopoly, of the then much-coveted clove and nut- 
meg, they were not only ignorant of letters, but had not even the rudest 
calendar. They had not even invented iron, which, together with 
their clothing, they received from strangers; and, but for the accident 
of their spices, they must have been downright savages, hardly on a 
level with the South-Sea Islanders. Had the bread of Britons some 
2000 years ago been confined to the potato, Julius Cæsar would un- 
questionably have found our ancestors far greater barbarians than he 
describes them to have been, and they would surely not have encoun- 
tered him with horses drawing armed chariots. : 
Perhaps the most advanced social position ever attained by men 
living on mere roots and fruits was that of the South-Sea Islanders. 
They cultivated no ceteal, not even the humblest, millet, but they were 
well supplied with farina-yielding plants—such as the yam, the sweet 
potato, the taro, and the breadfruit ; still their advance was of the 
humblest, for they had not even invented pottery or textile fabrics, 
having nothing better than paper for raiment. [They had pottery.— 
Ep.] 
It is possible for a people to attain a very respectable civilization 
when living on one of the chief cereals, although it be not the very 
highest. The mass of the Russians, and even of the Belgians, live on 
rye, and the mass of the people of Scotland on oats, although their 
condition would undoubtedly have been better had their bread been of 
wheat. The respectable amount of civilization which the lrish had 
attained after their conversion to Christianity, and which resulted in 
the adoption of foreign letters, and the construction of the round 
towers, was accomplished by growers and consumers of barley and 
oats, they been strangers to these, and their main food cousisted, 
as it afterwards did, of a single root, their ancient civilization never 
could have existed : on the contrary, they would have been on à lower 
level than the South-Sea Islanders, who possessed a far greater variety 
of sustenance, with a more benignant elimate. : 
But the potato is by no means the lowest quality of bread on which 
