324 CULTIVATED PLANTS. Chap. IX. 



islands, it appears strange to me that so many of uur culti- 

 vated plants sliould be still unknown or only doubtfully 

 known in the wild state. If, on the other hand, many of 

 these plants have been profoundly modified by culture, the 

 difficulty disappears. The difficulty would also be removed 

 if they have been exterminated during the progress of civili- 

 sation ; but M. De Candolle has shown that this probably has 

 seldom occiirred. As soon as a plant was cultivated in any 

 country, the half-civilised inhabitants would no longer have 

 need to search the whole surface of the land for it, and thus 

 lead to its extirpation ; and even if this did occur during a 

 famine, dormant seeds woixld be left in the ground. In 

 tropical countries the wild luxuriance of nature, as was long 

 ago remarked by Humboldt, overpowers the feeble efforts of 

 man. In anciently civilised temperate countries, where the 

 whole face of the land has been greatly changed, it can hardly 

 be doubted that some plants have become extinct ; never- 

 theless De Candolle has shown that all the plants historically 

 known to have been first cultivated in Europe still exist here 

 in the wild state. 



MM. Loiseleur-Deslongchamps * and De Candolle have re- 

 marked that our cultivated plants, more especially the cereals, 

 must originally have existed in nearly their present state ; for 

 otherwise they would not have been noticed and valued as 

 objects of food. But these authors apj^arently have not con- 

 sidered the many accounts given by travellers of the wretched 

 food collected by savages. I have read an account of the 

 savages of Australia cooking, during a dearth, many vegetables 

 in various ways, in the hopes of rendering them innocuous and 

 more nutritious. Dr. Hooker found the half-starved in- 

 habitants of a village in Sikhim suffering greatly from 

 having eaten arum-roots,^ which they had pounded and left 

 for several days to ferment, so as partially to destroy their 

 poisonous nature ; and he adds that they cooked and ate many 



■• ' Considerations sur les Cereales,' des espfeces offrant a I'origme mfime 



1842, p. 37. ' Gebgraphie Bot.,' 1855, un avantage incontestable." 



p. 930. " Plus on suppose I'agricul- ^ Dr. Hooker has given me tliis 



ture ancienne et remontant k une information. See, also, his ' Himalayan 



e'poque d'ignorance, plus il est probablt; Journals,' 1854, vol. ii. p. 49. 

 que les cultivateurs avaient choisi 



