OF PLANTS. 267 



the inhabitants of the tropics, of the Old as of the New 

 World, added to which, upon the Andes presents itself a 

 peculiar vegetable, the Quinoa,* a plant which simul- 

 taneously produces edible tubers and abundance of seeds, 

 comparable to those of Buckwheat. Lastly, we may 

 not pass over the bread-fruit, in the proper sense of the 

 word, which is the principal food of the inhabitants of 

 the large islands which extend from the East Indies, 

 through the whole tropical ocean, to the west coast of 

 America, the gift of a large and beautiful tree of the 

 family of the Nettle Plants, which from the use it is turned 

 to is called the Bread-fruit tree.f For the sake of variety, 

 some also cultivate with it the Tarroo-root,} the Tacca 

 tubers,^ or some Ferns, || the farinaceous leaf-stalks of 

 which afford a dainty meal. Last of all I will mention 

 the Potato, which has spread over the whole earth with 

 such rapidity, from the mountains of the New World, that 

 in many places it threatens, not exactly to the advantage 

 of mankind, to supplant every other culture. Only a 

 portion of its native land itself, Mexico, remains exempt, 

 and but in recent times has cultivated a few poor 

 tubers, at points on the coast, to set before the spoiled 

 European guests what, with a strange perversion of the 

 conception, one may call their native dish. A land, indeed, 

 which perhaps thousands of years' culture of Maize has 

 so little exhausted, that after a very little labour a bad 

 Maize harvest yields two hundred-fold profit, which in good 

 years amounts to six hundred-fold, does not want the 

 Potato. 



* Chenopodium Quinoa, f Artocarpus incisa. 



t Arum esculentum. Tacca pinnatifida. 



|| Acrostichum furcatum, Pteris esculenta, & T C, 



