MAN AND NATURE. 303 



itself indebted to the European continent. Until the 

 reign of Elizabeth our gardens were very scantily pro- 

 vided, and with varieties far inferior to those we owe to 

 a more select and careful culture. Exchanges of this 

 kind must have gone on in all the old countries from 

 unrecorded times. Europe is indebted to Asia for some 

 of her finest fruits the orange, the peach, &c. all ad- 

 vanced in perfection as well as variety when becoming 

 the objects of profitable or luxurious cultivation. In 

 some instances, but not often, we can go back to the 

 wild original stocks upon which Man has grafted by 

 degrees the various perfections of his modern orchards 

 and gardens, as well as the larger cereal products of his 

 fields. 



Not less remarkable than these exchanges in the 

 vegetable world are those of animal life similarly 

 effected. Eecurring to America as an example, we 

 find this new continent indebted to the old one for all 

 the mammalia most valuable to mankind the horse, 

 the cow, the sheep, the ass, the pig, the goat some 

 of these, as already mentioned, multiplying on their 

 new soil almost beyond human control. As an illus- 

 tration the fact is worthy of notice that at the time of 

 the discovery of America the milk of animals was 

 unknown there as an article of human food. It is. no 

 injurious satire upon the European, as the chief emi- 

 grant to the New World, to ask what would have been 

 the present condition of America had these animals 

 not accompanied .him thither ? We may fairly assert 

 that a century would hardly have sufficed to represent 

 the actual progress of any ten years of the intervening 



