v THE SPEEADING OF FOOD-PLANTS 63 



Levant, and seem likely to flourish. There are a 

 great number of similar cases which help to show 

 both how much work there is to be done, and what 

 useful work is being done. In the next chapter 

 we shall describe some special cases. 



CHAPTEE VI 



THE SPREADING OF FOOD-PLANTS (Continued) 



WE saw in the last chapter that, in the history 

 both of the Chinese and of the Japanese, we have 

 examples of people who deliberately set out to seek 

 useful plants which might be introduced into their 

 own country, and thus became public benefactors. 

 We saw also how nowadays, in other nations, the 

 same thing is done, but on a much bigger and more 

 elaborate scale. There are many interesting stories 

 of this kind that might be told. How tea and 

 rubber got to Ceylon, for instance, how quinine was 

 carried from South America to India, how cocoa 

 was carried to Africa, and so on, but we shall take 

 here a few examples from the United States. 



Let us begin with a simple case. We know 

 from the story-books that American children are 

 fond of cake, indigestible cake, plum-cake, full of 



