NATURE IN MOTION. 47 



and these the most essential to man with greater 

 flexibility of structure, so that he may carry them with 

 him wherever he wanders. He is, after all, not the master 

 ef creation ; he cannot at will alter the natural distri- 

 bution of vegetables, to suit his pleasure or to satisfy 

 his wants. Hence he has been compelled to choose, all 

 over the world, among the four thousand varieties of 

 grasses which adorn our generous earth, some twenty 

 kinds only, w r hich will in one summer, in a few months, 

 produce rich food, independent of the dry heat of the 

 tropics and the rigid cold of the North. It is they 

 which mark the periods in man's history; with them 

 came everywhere civilization in the change from a wan- 

 dering, pastoral life to the higher grade of permanent 

 agriculture. Thus, the great phases of man's history are 

 written also on the green pages of the vegetable world. 

 At a very early period already these cerealia must have 

 come from the Eden of God into the fields of man. 

 Their subsequent path may be distinctly traced from 

 nation to nation, but the unfathomable antiquity of their 

 first culture is clearly seen in the fact that, in spite of 

 the most careful researches, the genuine natural home 

 of the more important varieties has never been dis- 

 covered. Their original source is wrapped in the same 

 mystery which hides the first history of those domestic 

 animals that have accompanied man all over the globe 

 since his earliest migrations. They are, in truth, home- 

 less. After tracing them up through a few centuries, we 

 reach traditions and myths only, which invariably point 

 to the gods themselves as the first givers of these rich 



