Chap. IX. ON CULTIVATED PLANTS. 307 



extermination during the progress of civilisation would like- 

 wise remove the difficulty; but M. De Candolle has shown 

 that this probably has seldom occurred. As soon as a plant 

 became cultivated in any country, the half-civilised inhabitants 

 would no longer have need to search the whole surface of 

 the land for it, and thus lead to its extirpation; and even 

 if this did occur during a famine, dormant seeds would be left 

 in the ground. In tropical countries the wild luxuriance of 

 nature, as was long ago remarked by Humboldt, overpowers 

 the feeble efforts of man. In anciently civilised temperate 

 countries, where the whole face of the land has been greatly 

 changed, it can hardly be doubted that some plants have been 

 exterminated; nevertheless De Candolle has shown that all 

 the plants historically known to have been first cultivated in 

 Europe still exist here in the wild state. 



MM. Loiseleur-Deslongchamps 4 and De Candolle have re- 

 marked that our cultivated plants, more especially the cereals, 

 must originally have existed in nearly their present state ; for 

 otherwise they would not have been noticed and valued as 

 objects of food. But these authors apparently have not con- 

 sidered the many accounts given by travellers of the wretched 

 food collected by savages. I have read an account of the 

 savages of Australia cooking, during a dearth, many vegetables 

 in various ways, in the hopes of rendering them innocuous 

 and more nutritious. Dr. Hooker found the half-starved in- 

 habitants of a village in Sikhim suffering greatly from having 

 eaten arum-roots, 5 which they had pounded and left for several 

 days to ferment, so as partially to destroy their poisonous 

 nature ; and he adds that they cooked and ate many other dele- 

 terious plants. Sir Andrew Smith informs me that in South 

 Africa a large number of fruits and succulent leaves, and espe- 

 cially roots, are used in times of scarcity. The natives, indeed, 

 know the properties of a long catalogue of plants, some having 



4 'Considerations sur les Cereales/ offrant a 1'origine meme un avantage 



1842, p. 37. 'Ge'ographie Bot.,' 1855, incontestable." 



p. 930. " Plus on suppose l'agriculture s Dr. Hooker has given me this in- 



ancienne et remontant a une epoque formation. See, also, his ' Himalayan 



d'ignorance, plus il est probable que les Journals,' 1854, vol. ii. p. 49. 

 cultivateurs avaient choisi des especes 



x 2 



