88 THE ELM. 



Numbers of our common English weeds have conveyed themselves of 

 late years to distant countries, and in several cases have established 

 disastrous empire ; many pretty flowers, on the other hand, have also 

 travelled in the wake of civilization, and where once were only brambles 

 and hedge-nettles, now we see the quaint blossoms of the American 

 touch-me-not, or the golden quadrangles of the evening- primrose. 

 Even in our conservatories there are many similar instances of the 

 wonderful love of travel that pertains to plants. Among the choicest 

 orchids of the tropics frequently springs up that most sweet and tendei 

 little trefoil, the sleepy yellow Oxalis of the Mauritius ; and in one hot- 

 house at least that might be named, comes up every year, unsown and 

 of its own amiable accord, that beautiful blue-spiked Gymnostachyum 

 which has been dedicated, in its second name, to Mr. Cuming. A grand 

 book might be written upon the subject exclusively of these curious 

 wanderings ; another, still more delightful, upon the confraternity that 

 has been instituted among the different countries of the earth by the 

 deliberate transfer of their productions from one to the other. How 

 much does Europe owe to Asia ! How much to America ! How 

 largely in turn does the new world stand indebted to the old ! The 

 walnut and the lilac tree came first from Persia ; the Camellia is from 

 Japan ; the vine from the shores of the Caspian Sea. Wheat and 

 barley are from the same opulent part of South-western Asia which 

 tradition declares to have been the birth-place of the human family ; 

 cucumbers and melons ripened their first fruits beneath the sun of India ; 

 rosemary seems aboriginal to the northern shores of the Mediterranean. 

 Extending our survey to America, we find that for the inestimable 

 potato we must 4 thank Brazil ; the same great region has enriched our 

 gardens with countless flowers of the rarest beauty ; the ancient world 

 has sent thither, in beautiful recompense, two of the most valuable of 

 plants, those, namely, which produce coffee and rice. These are but 

 two or three instances out of a thousand that might be cited ; the 

 narration of all would run abreast of the history of human enterprise, 

 and, at the same moment, of nature's fair docility, a quality we should 

 never forget or overlook. For what would the world have been had 

 trees and plants and flowers sullenly refused to grow except in the very 

 spots where they were first deposited ! Everywhere the soil gives 

 willing nutriment ; and though the inclemencies and the asperities of 

 certain climates do certainly prevent the universal extension of plants, 

 the capacity of self- adaptation to an immense variety of latitudes and 

 longitudes, remains one of the most striking facts in physiology, and 



