58 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



warded. Come to this place after thirteen moons, 

 and you shall find something that will be of great 

 benefit in nourishing you and your children to the 

 latest generations. They did so, and to their great 

 surprise found plants they had never seen before, 

 but which from that ancient time have been con- 

 stantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. 

 Where her right-hand had touched the ground, they 

 found maize ; wherd her left-hand had touched it, 

 they found kidney-beans ; and where she had seated 

 herself they found tobacco.' 



The native country of barley is as little known as 

 that of wheat. Some travellers have mentioned it 

 as being produced in a wild state in distant parts of 

 the world ; but there is reason for believing that all 

 statements to this effect have been founded in error, 

 since the hardiest varieties of the cultivated grain 

 have never yet been seen to propagate themselves 

 during two following years. The seed of cultivated 

 barley, when chance-sown, will indeed produce plants; 

 but the grains which these bear are rarely, if ever, 

 seen to germinate. Some grasses which have been 

 placed by botanists in the same genus with barley, 

 bear to it a strong outward resemblance, yet none of 

 them can, by any degree of culture, be brought into 

 use as human food, nor indeed be made to exhibit 

 any marked improvement. One of these grasses, 

 the hordeum murinum of Linnaeus, known com- 

 monly as wall-barley, bears the nearest resemblance 

 of any to the cultivated plant. 



In one respect barley is of more importance to 

 mankind than wheat. It may be propagated over a 

 wider range of climate, bearing heat and drought 

 better, growing upon lighter soils, and coming so 

 quickly to maturity, that the short northern summers 

 which do not admit of the ripening of wheat, are 



