NATURE IN MOTION. 4 ( ,) 



the shores of the Mediterranean, and carried maize and 

 potatoes from America to Europe. But the influence of 

 these races in changing the natural distribution of plants 

 is even more evident in the colonies which they have 

 established abroad. These they have endowed not only 

 with their own vegetables, but also with those which would 

 not flourish in Europe, but might thrive in more favored 

 regions. Thus we find all European corn-plants in every 

 part of America; the vine has been carried to Madeira 

 and the Canaries, to the southern parts of Africa, and 

 America ; rice and cotton are raised in vast quantities 

 in the United States and in Brazil ; nutmeg and clove 

 have found their way to Mauritius, Bourbon, and the West 

 India Islands, and tea is now cultivated in Brazil, India, 

 and Java. Other races have done but little; the Arabs 

 helped to diffuse cotton, which the ancients already knew 

 in India, and later in Egypt, coffee, sugar, and the date- 

 palm; the Chinese have imported cotton from Hindostan, 

 and the Japanese tea from China. 



The earliest grains known in Europe were undoubtedly 

 wheat and barley, although even the oldest authors are 

 at variance as to their first home. Charred grains of 

 both are found in Pompeii, and pictures on the walls 

 of the silent city show quails picking grains out of a 

 spike of barley. The Bible, Homer, and Herodotus, al- 

 ready mention them as widely diffused, and Diodorus 

 Siculus even speaks of the belief entertained by many, 

 that wheat grew wild in the Leontine fields and several 

 other places in Sicily. So certain is it that antiquity 

 itself was at a loss where to fix the original abode of 

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