GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 71 



does not select some of the plants of the soil and 

 improve them by careful culture, but, for the 

 most part, he expels the native possessors of the 

 land, and introduces colonies of strangers. 



Thus, to take the condition of our own part of 

 the globe as an example ; scarcely one of the 

 plants which occupy our fields and gardens is 

 indigenous to the country. The walnut and the 

 peach come to us from Persia ; the apricot from 

 Armenia : from Asia Minor, and Syria, we have 

 the cherry tree, the fig, the pear, the pome- 

 granate, the olive, the plum, and the mulberry. 

 The vine which is now cultivated is not a native 

 of Europe ; it is found wild on the shores of the 

 Caspian, in Armenia and Caramania. The most 

 useful species of plants, the cereal vegetables, 

 are certainly strangers, though their birth place 

 seems to be an impenetrable secret. Some have 

 fancied that barley is found wild on the banks of 

 the Semara, in Tartary, rye in Crete, wheat at 

 Baschkiros, in Asia ; but this is held by the best 

 botanists to be very doubtful. The potatoe, 

 which has been so widely diffused over the world 

 in modern times, and has added so much to the 

 resources of life in many countries, has been 

 found equally difficult to trace back to its wild 

 condition.* 



* Humboldt, Geog. des Plantes, p. 29. It appears, however, 

 to be now ascertained that the edible potatoe is found wild in the 

 neighbourhood of Valparaiso. Mr. Sabine in the Horticultural 

 Trans, vol. v. p. 249. 



