202 



LETTERS ON TREES. 



in two or three familiar instances in the vegetable 

 world, sometimes the seed alone, and sometimes the 

 bud and the seed together, are made use of. 



20. Take first the Cereals, includino^ Wheat, Rve, 

 Oats, Barley, and others, — their relations to man 

 and man's relations to them. In much that he should 

 himself be capable of through his reason, man has 

 been left to the resources of his reason and the labour 

 of his hands. He has been so left, and that very ex- 

 pressly, in the matter of his daily bread. The Cereals, 

 accordingly, which supply this bread, and constitute 

 in fact the staple article of his sustenance, bear seed 

 only, are incapable of being propagated otherwise 

 than by seed, and can be raised only in sufficient 

 quantities for man's needs, by being sown by man's 

 own hand, and in ground which his own hands have 

 tilled. I have said in sufficient quantities, I should 

 have said, can only thus be raised at all. For left 

 to themselves, they disappear. Cultivated varieties 

 as they all are, or rather abnormal conditions of some 

 unknown species of Grass, they will not grow in the 

 wild state. Ifot that when left to themselves they 

 return (as do most cultivated varieties of plants) to 

 their natural state and so become worthless, — but 

 that they literally die out — wild plants, " thorns 

 and thistles," and even the common grasses (their 

 congeners) supplant them. Brought into their pre- 

 sent state we know not when or how, they can be 



