1 8 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



Mexicans, and in recent times another species of the 

 same genus [Agave Americana) has acquired the name 

 of Mexican aloe, and furnishes a well-known fibrous 

 material. Above the limit of rye and barley, in Chili 

 and Peru, grows another characteristic plant — the 

 quinoa— the seeds of which are used as food. On 

 the lower Orinoco the savage races subsist on the 

 Mauritia palm. In Africa the date-palm is the in- 

 heritance of the Arab. In Abyssinia the coffee 

 appears as the characteristic plant. With the Hindoo 

 it is rice or cotton. In China the tea-shrub is the 

 supreme national plant. Amongst the Indo-Cauca- 

 sian races of Western Asia and Europe the original 

 characteristic plants are wheat, barley, rye, and oats. 

 Southern Europe has the olive, and, together with 

 Central Europe, the vine. The Laplanders have no 

 characteristic plant, if we except the reindeer moss. 

 Yet all this is being changed with increasing civilisa- 

 tion ; as the European races obtained the almond, 

 peach, and apricot from Asia Minor, the orange from 

 China, rice from India, and the maize and potato 

 from America, so the colonies of the same races, 

 established in all climates and scattered over the 

 world, carried with them their characteristic plants, 

 or collected around them those of all other races. In 

 this manner maize, cotton, the vine, coffee, the orange, 

 and even tea, travelling from their original centres, 

 threaten every climate for which they are suitable, 



