14G 



THE POPULAE EDUCATOR 



productive of many useful commodities. Such are the 

 lion, tiger, leopard, jackal, wolf, and bear, whose skins 

 are highly valued; and various kinds of deer and 

 antelopes, the prey of packs of wolves and jackals, or 

 of the solitary lion and tiger. The fur animals and other 

 carnivora of the northern plains correspond very closely 

 with those of Europe in the same zone, and are as 

 eagerly trapped for the sake of their costly skins. 



Birds. -The names of our common fowls point to Asia 

 as the centre whence they were diffused. The Bantam 

 variety has been long known in our country for its 

 courage and fighting propensities. The Cochin-China 

 fowl has been introduced into Europe during the present 

 generation. South-eastern and Further India abound 

 with the wild stock of all our pheasant tribe. There are 

 few warblers in Asia, and the range of the nightingale 

 ends in Persia ; but the plumage of many birds is un- 

 equalled. The feathers of the gold and silver pheasant, 

 of the peacock, and of the ostrich of Arabia, are of 

 great value for dress and decoration. Parrots are also 

 very numerous. 



Pearl Oysters. Porcelainous and nacreous shells of 

 every variety of size and beauty are found on the varied 

 shores of Asia, suitable for ornament, for cameo-cutting, 

 and for the manufacture of mother of pearl. Of the 

 pearl oysters, properly so called, none have been so 

 long notable as those dived for along the Cingalese 

 and Coromandel coasts. There are less productive 

 pearl fisheries in the Persian Gulf and the Bed Sea. 



Vegetable Produce. 



The same physical causes that give variety to animal 

 life in Asia, influence in like manner the vegetable 

 produce. The floral zones are less irregular than the 

 faunal, for while animals are limited in their range by 

 the prevalence of food, or by their special adaptations, 

 their capacity for locomotion gives them a power of 

 widening or modifying their range, not possessed by 

 plants. 



The flora of Asia consists, in the first place, of plants 

 indigenous to the continent, but now also diffused 

 through other parts of the world ; in the second place, 

 of indigenous plants not yet diffused; in the third 

 place, of plants which have spread by nature, or 

 have been introduced by man. Generalising the flora, 

 we may say that Asia has given much and received 

 little. It is the native home of most of our useful 

 plants, as well as of our animals. Its flora and 

 fauna are now the most exuberant, both in number and 

 kind, on the surface of the earth, and its kingdoms are 

 the most densely peopled. The conditions of life are 

 here fully developed, excepting in the northern plains, 

 on the central table-land, and in the deserts, where 

 climate and soil allow but little growth either of trees 

 or plants. 



European fruits are mostly of Asiatic origin. The 

 vine, olive, Grange, and lemon, the cherry, almond, 

 walnut, peach, and fig, still grow wild in the wine and 

 olive zone of this continent; the olive principally west of 

 Hindostan; the vine in great perfection in Turkey and 

 Persia, and ranging across to China. The pine-apple is 

 so common in India as to be almost valueless. 



Of our flowers the China aster and Chinese primrose 

 tell their own origin. The camelia, damask rose, 

 hydrangea, chrysanthemum, weeping willow, and many 

 others of our choicest flowers and ornamental trees, have 

 been brought from China and other Asiatic districts. 



Of grain common to Europe, Asia produces in its 

 corresponding zones rice and maize, wheat, millet, and 

 barley ; with oats and rye in smaller proportion. Rice, 

 barley, millet, and rye are probably indigenous. The 

 vegetation of Siberia and Mantchooria is the same as 

 that of the like parts of Russia in Europe. 



It is, however, in the sub- tropical and tropical countries 



that the flora of Asia is exhibited in its fulness of power 

 and beauty. Botanically, this is the region of palms, the 

 ligher boundary of which waves, with local circum- 

 stances of climate, across the Old World, from about 25 

 }0 40 of north latitude, touching Europe only in the 

 ixtreme south of Spain, Italy, and the Moron. The 

 whole region of palms is a band of an irregular breadth, 

 oeing 40 wide in its narrowest part, and 70^ in the 

 widest part, and is situated pretty equally on each side 

 of the equator. It takes in the whole of Africa, with 

 the exception of Cape Colony, and the northern half of 

 Australia. These boundaries are nearly conterminous 

 with the limits of rice growth, and are circumscribed, at 

 a mean distance of about 5 north and south, by the 

 limits of vine culture. 



It will be convenient at this point to include Africa 

 in our survey of the zone, the description being neces- 

 sarily applicable in many particulars to the two con- 

 tinents. 



Africa and Asia. Of the many species of palms, the 

 date and the cocoa-nut palm are the most distinctive. 

 The date-palm ranges the deserts of Africa and Asia, 

 from the Atlantic to the Himalayas. The district of 

 cocoa-nuts is from Ceylon eastwards to the Pacific, 

 this palm loving the neighbourhood of the sea. The 

 date is the principal food of the roving desert tribes, 

 who wonder how people can live elsewhere without it. 

 Rice is the chief food of the densely-peopled countries 

 of India and China. The sugar-cane is cultivated in 

 Africa as well as in Asia, and coffee, now so extensively 

 grown in Arabia and India, is supposed to have spread 

 from Abyssinia. The distinctive fruits of the wine and 

 oil countries, oranges, peaches, pine-apples, figs, and 

 almonds, range also through the region of palms. 

 Palm-oil is produced abundantly in Africa, and corre- 

 spondingly, cocoa-nut oil is obtained in Ceylon. 



Teak and other timber trees are common to both 

 continents, and cotton is a universal product, every 

 part of the zone proving its capability of cotton growth 

 during the American war, when our supplies from 

 the United States were stopped. The area of supply 

 expanded so rapidly that our importations when at the 

 lowest amounted to 300,000,000 pounds. The acci- 

 dental stimulus to production being removed by peace, 

 the reaction has been violent, and supplies have sunk 

 to zero in many promising places, as rapidly as they 

 are recovering their former dimensions in the Southern 

 States. Egyptian cotton is of fine quality, and in India 

 there is not a spot but produces one or another variety. 

 China, too, has been noted, time out of mind, for a buff- 

 coloured staple called nankeen. 



The animals of Africa are akin to those of Asia, but 

 very few of them have been tamed. Of useful animal 

 products a description has been given in connection 

 with the British settlements and colonies in Africa, to 

 which may be added silk, which connects Europe, Asia, 

 Africa, and Australia. All the silk countries still rely 

 upon China and Japan, whence the silkworm first came, 

 for their supplies of grain or seed, as the eggs are called, 

 in which a large trade is carried on. 



Plants peculiar to Asia. Some of the most esteemed 

 woods for cabinet-making, as rosewood, satinwood, 

 sandalwood, and ebony, come from Further India. The 

 sago, areca, and other varieties of palm, are charac- 

 teristic of particular districts. Many guma, resins, 

 balsams, and drugs are still only obtained from Asia. 

 The most peculiar plants are, however, limited by 

 nature to a narrow area of cultivation, from which 

 they cannot be removed without destruction or the 

 loss of their principal properties. Such are the spicea 

 and tea. Several of the spices flourish nowhere so well 

 as in their small indigenous centre. It is a natural 

 law that when a plant is transferred to another centre 



