40 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



tural production, the bread-fruit has been overestimated. 

 Byron says of it : — 



" TIic bread-tree, which, -without tlie ploun;hshare yields 

 The unreaped harvests of unfurrowed fields; 

 And bakes its unadulterated loaves 

 Without a furnace, in unpurcliascd proves, 

 And flings oil famine from its fertile breast, 

 A priceless market for the gathering guest." 



The date, or palm tree, has been the object of veneration 

 with the Jew, the Christian and the Maliometan. AVith the 

 fig and tlie olive, it has lately been introduced into the United 

 States. But it seems too much to expect that these ancient 

 fruits will flourish here. Their associations are connected with 

 the past, and with countries famous in history, long before the 

 era of the Roman dominion. 



There are many species of vegetables extensively used as 

 food by inhabitants of northern countries, of a far different 

 nature from the noble fruits of the East. The Moors, Negroes 

 and Hottentots, eat gum; some tribes make a sort of bread 

 from the iinier bark of trees ; seaweed furnishes to many a 

 common article of cheap food ; many derive a considerable part 

 of their daily subsistance from different species of ferns, and 

 lichens, and fungi, or mushrooms, are used extensively as food 

 in Rust-ia and some other places ; and these slightly nourishing 

 species of vegetables are in use, not as an occasional resort in 

 famine, but as the daily refuge of poverty and stay of hunger 

 of large numbers of the human race. 



Of all cultivated plants, rice aflbrds alimentary support to 

 the greatest number of men. Unlike the other grains, wher- 

 ever it grows, it becomes the food of the working classes, to the 

 almost utter exclusion of other vegetal)le products. 



It is interesting to trace the changes in the cultivation of 

 barley, oats, rye, millet, and other ancient grains. Ko one of 

 them has ever been a general aliment of the race, yet at differ- 

 ent {(criods, and in limited localities, each of these cereals has 

 served as food to an important extent. Barley cakes are a 

 connnon food in some parts of Europe. Oatmeal is a common 

 and healtliy food with the Scotch, Welsh, and in a part of Eng- 

 and and France. A spiced rye cake was much in fashion some 

 centuries ago, and in some parts of Europe, rye is now a com- 



