jan. — mar. 1857.] Peruvian Bark-tree. 



239 



" Of no new agricultural undertaking is the result to be consi- 

 dered as certain. The whole system of agriculture consists but in 

 the exchange or transplantation of plants from one place to another. 

 This holds good for the agriculture of all Europe, and we may say 

 the same (as far as we are acquainted with them) for the other parts 

 of the world ; but this is particularly the case with the culture in 

 tropical districts, and with European civilization in other parts of 

 the world. The numberless host of crops of economical or techni- 

 cal nature belong, rarely, or never, by nature, to the lands in which 

 we see them raised.* But those cultivated plants are just the most 

 useful of the whole earth. "We seek and find at last, without dif- 

 ficulty, all the circumstances that they require, if the plants are not 

 wholly unfit for the change of air and soil, which quickly appears. 

 Many plants for the commerce of Java, whose produce, that of some 

 at least, brings large sums annually to the treasury, are not indige- 

 nous to that beautiful country, but have been brought to it from 

 elsewhere, — Coffees from Arabia, indigo from Southern Africa, 

 cinnamon from Ceylon, vanilla and nopal from Mexico, tobacco from 

 America, rice from China and Japan, etc. Of some others the ori- 

 gin is no longer to be known. Other plants were originally there, 

 but specimens of them have also been imported from other places, 

 and they all succeed excellently. To expose all this in detail would 

 be to communicate things already known. f 



* Von Humboldt (and we cannot produce a greater authority) says in his Essay 

 ' Sur la Geographie des Plantes,' p. 27 : " L'homme, inquiet et lahorieux, en par- 

 courant les diverses parties du monde, a force un certain nomhre de vegetaux 

 d'habiter tous les climats et toutes les hauteurs ; mais cet empire exerce sur ces etres 

 organises h'a point denature leur nature primitive. La pomme-de-terre, cultivee 

 a Chili a. trois mille six cents metres de hauteur, porte la meme fleur que celle que 

 Ton a introduite dans les plaines de la Siberie. L'orge qui nourrissait les chevaux 

 d'Achille etait sans doute la meme que nous semons aujourd'hui. Les formes ca- 

 racteristiques des vegetaux et des animaux, que presente la surface actuelle du 

 globe, ne paraissent avoir subi aucun changement depuis les epoques les plus recu- 

 lees," etc. 



f Humboldt says (p. 27), " C'est ainsi que l'homme change a son gre la sur- 

 face du globe et rassemble autour de lui les plantes des climats les plus eloignes. 

 Dans les colonies Europeennes des deux Indes un petit terrain cultive presente le 

 cafe de 1' Arabic, la canne a sucre de la Chine, l'indigo de l'Afrique et une foule 

 d'autres "vegetaux qui appartient aux deux hemispheres." Others think indigo an 



