220 THE FLORIST AND 



the Barley and Rye, the Buckwheat is an object of tolerably extensive 

 culture. With the already named Banana, the Yams,* the Mandioc,f ai4£ 

 the Batatas % contribute largely to the daily food of the inhabitants of the 

 tropics, of the Old as of the New World, added to which, upon the Andes 

 presents itself a peculiar vegetable, the Quinoa,§ a plant which simulta- 

 neously produces edible tubers and abundance of seeds, comparable to those 

 of Buckwheat. Lastly, we may not pass over the bread-fruit, in the proper 

 sense of the word, which is the principal food of the inhabitants of the large 

 islands which extend from the East Indies through the whole tropical 

 ocean, to the west coast of America, the gift of a large and beautiftl tree 

 of the family of the Nettle Plants, which, from the use it is turned to, is 

 called the Bread-fruit tree.|| For the sake of variety, some also cultivate 

 with it the Tarroo-root,** the Tacca tubers, ff or some Ferns,JJ the fari- 

 naceous leaf-stalks of which afford a dainty meal. 



Last of all, I will mention the Potato, which has spread over the whole 

 earth with such rapidity, from the mountains of the New World, that in 

 many places it threatens, not exactly to the advantage of mankind, to sup- 

 plant every other culture. Only a portion of its native land itself, Mexico, 

 remains exempt, and but in recent times has cultivated a few poor tubers, at 

 points on the coast, to set before the spoiled European guests what, with a 

 strange perversion of the conception, one may call their native dish. A 

 land, indeed, which perhaps thousands of years' culture of Maize has so 

 little exhausted, that after a very little labor a bad Maize harvest yields 

 two hundred-fold profit, which in good years amounts to six hundred-fold, 

 does not want the Potato. 



And we, who flatter ourselves that we are great agriculturists, who plow, 

 manure, and sow with ingenious machines, imagine that we have done great 

 things when we reap a twelve-fold harvest. Even this we do not owe to our 

 art, to which we might so readily ascribe it. The worst-tilled soil produces 

 a better harvest in a favorable year, than we can extort from the best soil 

 with all all our industry in an unfavorable season. Truly, only he who looks 

 no further than the clod which his plow has thrown up, can preserve the 

 feeling of the importance of human activity in his bosom. He who lets 

 his free glance rove over the earth's ball, and looks at large over the play 

 of active forces, laughs at the digging, dragging, bustling, panting ant-hill, 



* Dioscorea sativa. j- Manihot utilissima. 



'I Batatis edulis. § Chenopodium Quinoa. 



|| Artocarpus incisa. ** Arum esculentum. 



ff Tacca pinnatifida. 

 %% Acrostichum furcatum, Pteris esculenta, etc. 



