Oil! GIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 9 



We probably owe our knowledge of the uses of 

 almost all plants to man having originally existed 

 in a barbarous state, and having been often com- 

 pelled by severe want to try as food almost 

 everything which he could chew and swallow. 



" From what we know of the habits of savages 

 in many quarters of the world, there is no reason 

 to suppose that our cereal plants originally existed 

 in their present state so valuable to man. Let us 

 look to one continent alone ; namely, Africa. Barth 

 states that the slaves over a large part of the cen- 

 tral region regularly collect the seeds of a wild 

 grass, the Pennisetum disticlmm ; in another dis- 

 trict he saw women collecting the seeds of a Poa 

 by swinging a sort of basket through the rich 

 meadow-land. Near Tete, Livingstone observed 

 the natives collecting the seeds of a wild grass ; and 

 farther south, as Anderson informs me, the natives 

 largely use the seeds of a grass of about the size 

 of canary seed, which they boil in water. They 

 eat also the roots of certain reeds ; and every one 

 has read of the Bushmen prowling about and dig- 

 ging up with a fire-hardened stake various roots. 

 Similar facts with respect to the collection of the 

 seeds of wild grasses in other parts of the world 

 could be given. 



