308 PRELIMINARY REMARKS, Chap. IX. 



been found during famines to be eatable, others injurious to 

 health, or even destructive to life. He met a party of Baquanas 

 who, having been expelled by the conquering Zulus, had lived 

 for years on any roots or leaves which afforded some little 

 nutriment, and distended their stomachs, so as to relieve the 

 pangs of hunger. They looked like walking skeletons, and 

 suffered fearfully from constipation. Sir Andrew Smith also 

 informs me that on such occasions the natives observe as a 

 guide for themselves, what the wild animals, especially baboons 

 and monkeys, eat. 



From innumerable experiments made through dire necessity 

 by the savages of every land, with the results handed down 

 by tradition, the nutritious, stimulating, and medicinal pro- 

 perties of the most unpromising plants were probably first 

 discovered. It appears, for instance, at first an inexplicable 

 fact that untutored man, in three distant quarters of the 

 world, should have discovered amongst a host of native plants 

 that the leaves of the tea-plant and mattee, and the berries 

 of the coffee, all included a stimulating and nutritious essence, 

 now known to be chemically the same. We can also see that 

 savages suffering from severe constipation would naturally 

 observe whether any of the roots which they devoured acted as 

 aperients. We probably owe our knowledge of the uses of 

 almost all plants to man having originally existed in a bar- 

 barous state, and having been often compelled by severe want 

 to try as food almost everything which he could chew and 

 swallow. 



From what we know of the habits of savages in many quarters 

 of the world, there is no reason to suppose that our cereal plants 

 originally existed in their present state so valuable to man. 

 Let us look to one continent alone, namely, Africa : Barth 6 states 

 that the slaves over a large part of the central region regularly 

 collect the seeds of a wild grass, the Pennisetum distichum; 

 in another district he saw women collecting the seeds of a Poa 

 by swinging a sort of basket through the rich meadow-land. 

 Near Tete Livingstone observed the natives collecting the seeds 



6 'Travels in Central Africa,' Eng. translat., vol. i. pp. 529 and 390; vol. ii. 

 pp. 29, 265, 270. Livingstone's ' Travels/ p. 551. 



