NATURE IN MOTION. 57 



enthusiastic admirers an incomparably rich gift of the 

 West to the East, but which now might easily be looked 

 upon as the fatal fruit marking in the annals of history 

 the first decline o*f European nations. 



But even tobacco is not accepted as a Western gift 

 by all botanists. Although it is said that the Spaniards 

 found it used in Mexico medicinally, especially in the 

 treatment of wounds, and saw it smoked there, as the 

 English did in Virginia, still it was certainly known as 

 early as 1601 in Java and China, and there is good rea- 

 son to believe at an even earlier date in China. Now, 

 as tobacco did not reach Europe before 1559, when it 

 was first used in Portugal and, consequently, in Europe 

 as medicine, it may at least have been known in Eastern 

 Asia long before the discovery of America. Nature, 

 moreover, seems almost desirous to avenge the unnatural 

 movement from west to east by the rapid degeneration 

 which marks the culture of both these vegetables in 

 Europe. But even if maize really came from this con- 

 tinent first, if the Indian fig and the closely related agave, 

 which now grow wild around the Mediterranean and add 

 so much to its picturesque scenery, have their true home 

 in the New World, these two plants would still be the 

 only ones that have ever travelled eastward, single and 

 isolated exceptions to the great law of Nature, that plants, 

 animals, and men, all must travel towards the setting sun. 

 This mysterious but undeniable movement is still going 

 on. It proceeds, even in our day, on a grand and im- 

 posing scale, and essentially alters, from time to time, the 

 vegetable character of whole countries, as they are newly 

 3* 



