CHAP, ii.] UNSDITABILITY. 259 



from future expense, or at least from disappointing 

 speculations. 



It is certainly a very remarkable case of fitness and 

 unfitness, of assimilation and rejection may we not 

 say of Providential design and arrangement ? that so 

 many of the natural productions of Asia, the cradle of 

 the human race, should be found available for our per- 

 manent use, while so few from the newly-discovered 

 hemisphere can be fixed under our sway without difficulty. 

 It mattered little to the infant human race, that the 

 western world lay so many centuries unknown and cut 

 off by the then impassable expanse of ocean, if it was 

 to yield so few things necessary to the requirements of 

 a rising population. The observation is applicable to 

 plants, as well as to birds and animals. There seems 

 to be almost a natural repulsion between our soil and 

 whatever comes to it from South America especially, 

 and a kindly relationship and attraction to things which 

 are the growth of eastern regions. We have scores of 

 plants from the warm parts of Asia and its islands, which 

 stand the climate of Great Britain admirably, and are 

 most valuable additions both to the flower and the vege- 

 table garden ; whereas, we believe, everything which we 

 have received from South America, the extreme parts 

 excepted, such as Potatoes, Heliotropes, Marvels of 

 Peru, Tropoeolums, &c., not only are cut down by the 

 slightest frost, but are with difficulty saved from " damp- 

 ing off," as the gardeners call it, during our winters, 

 even if protected from the cold. According to all that 

 we can as yet gather, a similar degree of suitability and 

 unsuitability to English seasons extends to the birds also 

 of these respective continents : while Cocks, Pheasants, 

 Pea-fowl, and, it now appears, Lophophori, can be raised 



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