46 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



sent day verifies and substantiates them more and more 

 clearly. All p good things, it has been truly said, come 

 from the Orient. 



Plants also seem to have their common home in the 

 East, from whence they have travelled and scattered in 

 all directions, far and wide. We mean not to speak 

 here of the first epoch in the history of the earth, when 

 islands rose out of a vast chaotic ocean, covered with 

 plants which thence spread over the globe, wandering 

 from the equator to the poles, and from high mountains 

 to humble valleys. We speak not of the days when 

 palrn-trees and ferns were buried under the eternal snows 

 of northern seas. Of those grand movements we have 

 as yet too little positive knowledge. But we can follow, 

 in comparatively modern times, the migrations of some 

 plants, step by step, and we always see them travel 

 from the rising towards the setting sun. Coffee and tea, 

 sugar and cotton, bananas and spice, all were first known 

 in the far East, and have, from thence, slowly followed 

 the apparent light to the West. Alexander the Great 

 brought from his expeditions the broad bean and cucum- 

 ber to Greece, and flax and hemp are of Indian birth. 



Most important, however, for the life of man, and there- 

 fore his most faithful companions in his own great jour- 

 neys, are the grasses. It is these which mainly feed him 

 and domestic animals. Tropical regions certainly produce 

 the breadfruit, cocoanut, and date, which support man 

 spontaneously all the year round ; but they are bound to 

 and confined within small districts, and cannot be trans- 

 planted. Providence, therefore, has endowed some grasses 



