348 Plants, characteristic of Different Nations. 



nations ; great revolutions, however, have taken place in 

 their distribution, and the existing relations are greatly differ- 

 ent from the original. 



A closer examination will however prove, that the Cau- 

 casian nations almost exclusively have effected those revolu- 

 tions, which also will be found to have gone hand in hand 

 with the rising culture. The Caucasian nations, and parti- 

 cularly the Europeans, have known by degrees how to trans- 

 plant the characteristic plants of other nations and races to 

 their own home, and have thus fetched the nobler fruits, such 

 as the almond, the apricot, the peach, from Asia Minor and 

 Persia, the orange from China. They have transplanted 

 the rice and cotton on the coasts of the Mediterranean, they 

 have brought the maize and the potatoe from America to 

 Europe, where they support millions of human beings, and 

 have often prevented famine when other crops failed. By 

 industry and extensive trade they have obtained the pro- 

 ducts of such foreign characteristic plants as cannot thrive 

 with them, and thus procured for daily use the tea of the 

 Chinese, the coffee of the Arabs, the rice and cotton of the 

 Hindoos. 



And yet, far greater appears the influence exerted by those 

 Caucasian nations, called Europeans, in the revolutions which 

 have taken place in the diffusion of characteristic plants, if 

 we look to their colonies, where countries have almost 

 changed into the possession of an European population. They 

 have not only introduced in their colonies their own charac- 

 teristic plants, or such as they had in early times transplant- 

 ed at their home, but having become possessed of countries 

 of different climates, they have carried there such plants as 

 could not succeed in the mother country, and by these means 

 have been enabled to collect the characteristic plants of al- 

 most every other nation. Thus we trace the cause to the 

 European sorts of grain being largely cultivated throughout 

 North America, in the highlands of Mexico and South 



