Cul] AND SYMBOLS. 67 



but surely tlie metamorphosis of the butterfly into wings is 

 trivial compared with the vastness of that last inevitable 

 transformation which we shall undergo, when all our little 

 crises will end in the great crisis of Being. A. 



The Effects of Cultivation. 



What marvellous encouragement man has to work ! In all 

 departments of action what splendid results have followed 

 his labour ! By what wondrous processes he has been able to 

 develop the beautiful from the crude, the valuable from the 

 worthless ! See his work transforming even the vegetation of 

 the globe. It has often been remarked that we do not owe a 

 single useful plant to Australia or the Cape of Good Hope, 

 countries abounding to an unparalleled degree with endemic 

 species, or to Kew Zealand, or to America south of the Plata, 

 and according to some authors not to America northward of 

 Mexico. Mr. Darwin does not believe that any edible or 

 valuable plant, except the canary-grass, has been derived from 

 an oceanic or uninhabited island. If nearly all our useful 

 plants, natives of Europe, Asia, and South America, had 

 originally existed in their present condition, the complete absence 

 of similarly useful plants in those great countries would indeed 

 be a surprising fact. But these plants have been so greatly 

 modified and improved by culture as no longer to resemble any 

 natural species, and so one can understand why those countries 

 have given us no plants of use to us in our present state of 

 civilisation, for they were either inhabited by men who did not 

 cultivate the ground at all, as in Australia and the Cape of 

 Good Hope, or who cultivated it very imperfectly, as in some 

 parts of America. These countries do yield plants which are use- 

 ful to savage man ; and Dr. Hooker, in his " Flora of Australia," 

 enumerates no less than one hundred and seven such species in 

 Australia alone ; but these plants have not been improved, and 

 consequently cannot compete here with those which have been 

 cultivated and improved during thousands of years in the 

 civilised world. By proper cultivation they will become able to 

 do so. They may be almost transformed ; for by his labour 

 man is able out of the growths of the wilderness to develop the 

 blossoms of the rose. VA. 



