16 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES, 



colony ; and from this source all the subsequent rice 

 harvests of that division of the New World, and the 

 large exportations of the same valuable grain to 

 Europe, have sprung. The wheat now cultivated 

 in Rohilcund, in India, ' was propagated by seed 

 brought from England, since the conquest, by Mr 

 Hawkins ;'* and the potato, within a very few years, 

 has been extensively spread by us through the In- 

 dian peninsula, and there, by preventing the exclu- 

 sive use of rice, is greatly ameliorating the condition 

 of the native population. Facts such as these are 

 highly interesting ; because they exhibit the moral 

 as well as natural causes which influence the distri- 

 bution of vegetable food throughout the earth. In 

 the following pages we shall endeavour to collect 

 whatever is satisfactorily known as to this branch of 

 our subject. Before we proceed, however, to a par- 

 ticular history of species or varieties of vegetable 

 substances used for the sustenance of man, we shall 

 take a rapid, though necessarily imperfect view, of 

 the distribution of the corn-plants throughout the 

 globe at the present day. 



Agriculture can be pursued but very partially 

 within the northern polar circles, where, for the 

 most part, the intenseness of the frosts during a 

 protracted winter binds up the soil, not otherwise 

 sterile, and condemns it to perpetual unfruitfulness. 



The utmost limit of the culture of grain in Si- 

 beria reaches only to the sixtieth degree^of latitude, 

 and in the more eastern parts of the province these 

 important products are scarcely to be met with 

 higher than fifty-five degrees. In the more southern 

 parts of Siberia, and in districts adjoining the 

 Wolga, the land is extraordinarily fertile, so that 

 crops of grain are obtained with a very trifling amount 



* Heber's Journey, vol. ii, p. 131, 



