262 THE GEOGRAPHY 



live processes, or at all events, the development of all the 

 parts containing nutrient matter, within the course of a few 

 months. By this means he has rendered himself indepen- 

 dant, in the half tropical regions of the evil action of the 

 dry season, and in the higher latitudes of the destructive 

 influence of cold, and thus ensured the possibility of culti- 

 vating plants, which there must be killed by the drought of 

 summer, here by the cold of winter. Setting aside the 

 cultivation of fruits which serve rather pleasure than 

 necessity, there remain but three arborescent vegetables in 

 the whole world which can be included among the true 

 food plants, namely, the Bread-fruit, the Cocoa-nut and 

 the Date, which actually furnish the chief proportion of the 

 food of great bodies of men, and over widely extended 

 areas, and thence have become objects of culture ; the 

 Cycadacea and Sago-palms, on account of their starchy 

 parenchyma, can at most perhaps be taken into our 

 reckoning only in a very limited circle in the East Indies. 

 All the rest of the food-plants are either such as possess a 

 subterraneous, usually tuberous stem, which sends up 

 shoots above the soil, persisting but a few months, on 

 which develop flowers and fruit, while during the remaining 

 time, sleeping, as it were, beneath the protecting coverlet 

 of earth, it sets the disfavour of the climate at defiance, 

 or such as die at the end of a short period of vegetation, 

 and ensure the future reproduction, in the slumbering 

 germ of the seed. To the former belong, for instance, the 

 Potato, derived from the Cordilleras of Chili, Peru and 

 Mexico ; to the latter, almost all our corn-plants. 



One plant alone distinguishes itself among the cultivated 

 plants by a peculiar mode of vegetation, a plant which was 

 perhaps the earliest gift of Nature to Man awakening to life, 



