21 



of our earth were thinly scattered over a widely extended 

 surface, and poorly fed : 



" Quippe aliter tunc, orhe novo, ccelocjue recenti 

 " Vivebant homines." 



And we ought not to reject as fiction what the poet tells 

 us of our ancestors living on " glandes et arbutaj' when 

 we see the miserable state in respect of food, in which 

 savages are often found. 



The ingenuity of man, and his intercourse with his 

 brethren in difterent chmates, have discovered and com- 

 municated new sources of nourishment, which had long 

 escaped notice; and when Humboldt saw the natives of 

 the Teneriffe Islands making bread of fern root, he ex- 

 claims : How little does the Jinest climate and most fertile 

 soil defend the lower classes of mankind from the most 

 wretched jwverty /" 



With a redundance of food for centuries, our popula- 

 tion has increased to an enormous amount, and notwith- 

 standing- the new sources, so numerous and various, — our 

 supply of provisions sometimes falls short of the demand 

 for consumption, and we occasionally feel those scarcitieSy 

 I might almost say famines y to which our early ancestors 

 were more accustomed. 



" Cum glandes et arhuta, sacrcs 



" Deficereyit sylvce, victumque dodenu negarat." 



An history of the successive additions that have been 

 made in many centuries to the vegetables upon which the 

 human species and its domestic animals are maintained, 

 would be curious and amusing ; and the contrast between 

 our present modes of sustenance, and that to which the 



