160 FIELD, FOREST AND FARM 



the wild plant is usually of very little nutritive value 

 to man. His is still the task of so cultivating it as 

 to derive advantage from its natural aptitudes by 

 improving them. 



"In its native country, on the mountains of Chile 

 and Peru, the potato in its wild state is a poor di- 

 minutive tuber about as large as a hazel-nut. Man 

 takes the worthless wild stock into his garden, plants 

 it in rich soil, tends it, waters it; and behold, from 

 year to year the potato thrives more and more, gain- 

 ing in size and in nutritive properties, and finally be- 

 coming a farinaceous tuber as large as your two 

 fists. 



"On the sea-coasts, exposed to all the winds that 

 blow, there grows a wild cabbage with a tall stalk and 

 a few green leaves of bitter taste and rank odor. 

 But beneath its rude exterior it may perhaps hide 

 invaluable aptitudes. Apparently this suspicion oc- 

 curred to him who first, so long ago that the record of 

 it is lost, took the sea-coast cabbage under cultiva- 

 tion. The suspicion was well-founded. The wild 

 cabbage has been improved by man's incessant care: 

 its stalk has become firmer and its leaves have multi- 

 plied, whitened, acquired tenderness, and massed 

 themselves in a compact head, so that we have the 

 crisp and succulent cabbage of to-day as the admir- 

 able result of this notable metamorphosis. There on 

 the sea-coast rock was the first beginning of the ex- 

 cellent plant; here in our gardens is its present at- 

 tainment. But what about its intermediate forms 

 which, through the centuries, marked the gradual 



