application of the seeds of many to the support of mankind ; an 

 application of such distant origin as to be not only beyond the 

 earliest annals of our race, but even to figure as a myth in the 

 traditions which preceded them, and to occasion the practice of agri- 

 culture, among all the nations of antiquity, to be deduced from 

 the teachings of a God. 



The Cereal Grasses, as the different species so employed are 

 sometimes termed, more familiarly known collectively as Com, 

 constitute but a very small proportion of the thousands included' 

 in the tribe before us ; but their immediate and widely-extended 

 influence upon human economy, as accompaniments of advancing 

 civilization in every age and country, renders them of paramount 

 interest, compared with their smaller-seeded associates forming 

 the promiscuous vegetation of the natural pasture. The mythic 

 origin of their cultivation associates strangely with that of their 

 own natural history, which still remains untraced from the wild 

 state, in all the most important species that constitute the staple 

 food of nations or of races ; unless the assertions of M. Esprit 

 Fabre, of Agde, in regard to that of "Wheat, be found, by other 

 experimentalists, decisive of our staple bread-corn being an altered 

 form of a Grass hitherto regarded by botanists generically distinct. 

 Should this fact be substantiated, a new and important field 

 would be laid open to speculative industry, as to the possible 

 modification of other wild Grasses ; and thus render many, which 

 are at present useless in the pasture, objects of interest as adapted 

 for a different and higher sphere of utility. In the mean time, 

 none of the kinds of Grain, with which we are now familiarly ac- 

 quainted as objects of cultivation, are recognized beyond its pale, 

 unless as solitary and temporary productions from seeds of chance 

 distribution. While other Grasses, whether annual or perennial, 

 obtain, under a similar dispensation, a permanent local attachment 

 to the soil upon which they may have intruded, the Wheat, Barley, 

 Oat, Rye, Maize, &c. are, unless fostered by the management of 



