IV 



The World's Commercial Products 



traded throughout the Mediterranean and also with Britain, the Baltic, and the Azores ; 

 by means of caravans they penetrated Africa, reaching as far as Egypt to the East, Morocco 

 to the West, and across the Sahara to the River Niger. The Romans, the Greeks, the 

 Venetians were all trading peoples, and by their enterprise the wealth of India became known 

 and accessible. 



Another result of this intercourse between nations was that the useful plants of the world 

 became widely distributed. The cultivation of the most important of those of the Old 

 World, those which are absolutely necessary to man, dates from very remote ages. If we had 

 been preparing, some three or four thousand years ago, a book similar to the present on the 

 commercially useful plants we should have had to include wheat, barley, rice, millets of 

 various kinds, tea, flax, hemp, the vine, the olive, the date, bananas, various legumes, and 

 other vegetables. It is true we should not have heard of the potato 

 or the sweet potato, tobacco, cocoa, or Indian corn (maize), but these 

 have been cultivated for almost as long by the American races, and 

 were waiting for the discoveries of Columbus and his successors for 

 their introduction into the Old World. This early discovery and 

 the utilisation by man of the most valuable plants is one of the 

 most extraordinary facts in the history of agriculture. As De 

 Candolle well puts it in his most interesting book on The Origin of 

 Cultivated Plants, " Men have not discovered and cultivated during the 

 last two thousand years a single species which can rival maize, rice, 

 the sweet potato, the potato, the bread fruit, the date, cereals, 

 millets, sorghams, the banana, soy. These date from three, four, or 

 five thousand years, perhaps even in some cases six thousand years." 

 The useful plants grown in Graeco-Roman times were not added to in 

 any degree prior to the discovery of America. The finding of 

 America brought in a number of plants new to the Old World, and 



of very high value, such as the potato, 

 maize, sweet potato, tobacco, and cocoa. 

 Within a comparatively short time these 

 plants also found their way into other 

 countries. The potato reached Europe at 

 about the end of the sixteenth century, 

 and as indicating the interest which 

 attached to this novelty we find that in 

 a book, Gerard's Herbal, published in 

 1597, Gerard selected, in presenting his 

 own portrait, to hold in his hand a 

 flowering branch of the potato plant, 

 which he had cultivated in his garden. The maize plant rapidly reached almost all tropical 

 countries, cocoa was taken to Ceylon and elsewhere, and in this way the greatest additions to 

 the number of really important cultivated plants of the Old World since very early times was 

 brought about. Another important American plant, cinchona, the source of quinine, was 

 introduced to cultivation largely through the agency of a man still living — Sir Clements 

 Markham, K.C.B., F.R.S. It helped Ceylon over the coffee crisis, and it is at the present 

 time the source of an important industry in Java. 



As man's life became more complex and his wants increased he found it necessary to form 

 plantations of other species, such as fibre and rubber-yielding plants. Para rubber is the 

 most important of the new industries in the East, where in Ceylon and the Malay peninsula 

 its cultivation is attracting much labour and capital. This valuable plant is a native of 

 Brazil, and formerly the whole of the rubber it yielded was collected from wild trees scattered 



A CHINAMAN THRESHING MILLET 



