216 THE FLORIST AND 



the mode of life proper to many of these fungi, appears no longer to hold 

 good when their enormous increase assumes the character of an universal 

 plague, which constitutes a phenomenon as far beyond our explanation, as it 

 is above our comprehension. — 31. Tulasne, in Comptes Rendus, October 



17th, 1853. ' 



SKETCH OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT 

 OF THE PLANTS YIELDING FOOD. 



There is not one region among the foregoing which has not been com- 

 pelled to deliver up some of its inhabitants for the decoration of our plea- 

 sure grounds, or to the service of Science in our Botanic Gardens ; and 

 although we are obliged to afford artificial warmth in winter to those from 

 the proper tropical kingdoms of Martius, Jacquin, Adanson, Reinwardt, 

 and Roxburgh, and even to protect them from the unpropitious climate in 

 summer, yet there remains a great number of plants from all parts of the 

 earth, and the mountain plants, at least, from the tropics, which when culti- 

 vated by us in the open air, seem to corroborate the proposition, that Man 

 is, in this respect, lord of Creation,. and that howsoever Nature may have 

 arranged the vegetable carpet of the earth, he has the power to alter this 

 arrangement according to his liking, and, above all, for his service. But it 

 is not so ; and the facts on which the statement is founded are but illusory 

 when we look, not at a little spot of earth like a Botanical Garden, but at 

 cultivation on a large scale, which alone is really of importance. 



Here, Man again reassumes his character of a helpless creature ; his ac- 

 tivity in plowing and manuring is but an insignificant aid to the prosperity 

 of cultivated plants, to which climatal variations prescribe as distinct ranges 

 of distribution as to the wild Flora, and which the favorable or unfavorable 

 influence of a season brings to luxuriant development or destroys. All over 

 the globe has man, for the supply of necessary food, selected most solely 

 summer plants, that is, such plants as complete their whole vegetative pro- 

 cesses, or at all events, the development of all the parts containing nutrient 

 matter, within the course of a few months. By this means he has rendered 

 himself independent, in the half tropical regions of the evil action of the 

 dry season, and in the higher latitudes of the destructive influence of cold, 

 and thus insured the possibility of cultivating plants, which there must be 

 killed by the drought of summer, here by the cold of winter. 



