MARCH 55 



a flower that looks like a Gaillardia. In the middle of 

 the page is the title, with Adam on one side, dressed in 

 the skin of a beast and holding a very fine spade, like the 

 spades used in France to this day. This, I imagine, 

 represents Toil, while Wisdom is personified on the other 

 side by Solomon. He is clad in the conventional dress 

 of the kings of the Middle Ages a long cloak, a cape of 

 ermine, a spiked crown, a sceptre, bare legs, and a pair of 

 Eoman sandals. At the top of the page is the eye of 

 God with a Hebrew word written below it. At the four 

 corners are four female figures representing Europe, 

 Asia, Africa, and America. Europe, only, is in a chariot 

 drawn by a pair of horses. Asia, riding a rhinoceros, 

 wears a very short skirt and curious, pointed, curled shoes, 

 not unlike the slippers still worn in Turkey, and a stiff 

 headdress that resembles those used by women in the 

 thirteenth century. Africa has no clothes, only a hat, 

 and rides a zebra. America has a bow and arrow, and 

 rides, also without clothes, a curious long-eared sheep. 

 These ladies are surrounded by the vegetation supposed 

 to be typical of each country. Among other plants, Asia 

 has again the Vegetable Lamb before described, and 

 Asia, not America, has the Indian Corn (Maize), which, 

 I believe, is supposed to be as exclusively indigenous to 

 America as Tobacco is. It appears to have been entirely 

 unknown to the Old World, and has never been found with 

 other corn in any of the old tombs, or alluded to in the 

 classics. Its cultivation must have spread very quickly, 

 and it is known all over the South of Europe as Bl& 

 de Turquie to this day. Turquie was the term used 

 in the Middle Ages for describing anything foreign. 

 When the early discoverers of Canada went up the 

 St. Lawrence and reached the rapids, which still bear 

 the name of La Chine rapids, they thought they had 

 reached the China seas and joined the continent of Asia. 



