98 
ON THE GROWTH OF WHEAT IN RELATION TO CLIMATE 
AND TEMPERATURE. BY THE REV. WM. THORP. 
It is the vegetation of a country which decides the social 
habits of a people, and determines the conditions according 
to which men gather into various societies. The inhabitants 
of the South Sea Islands enjoy, with little exertion, the 
splendid fruits of the banana, the bread fruit, and palm ; 
while the people of the north laboriously cultivate the less 
fertile soil to secure their support by the scanty fruit of 
the cereals. In some parts of the Philippines the earth is 
so exuberantly fertile, that four crops per year are gathered 
in — two of rice, one of melon, and one of maize ; while in 
the extreme north of Europe the husbandman is content 
with a miserable crop of barley. The bread-fruit tree in 
the tropics produces so abundant a crop, that three trees are 
quite sufficient to maintain a man for eight months. The 
great discoverer, Cook, says, " Whoever has planted ten 
bread-fruit trees, has fulfilled his duty to his own and suc- 
ceeding generations, as completely and amply as an inhabi- 
tant of our rude clime, who, throughout his whole life, has 
ploughed during the region of winter, reaped in the heat of 
summer, and not only provided his present household with 
bread, but painfully saved some money for his children." 
On the table lands of the East India mountains, around the 
valleys of Cashmere and Nepaul, the people enjoy in sum- 
mer the delicious fruits of the tropics, and in winter cultivate 
our northern cereals. Under such various conditions, by 
which the food of the people of different countries is raised, 
there must, naturally, be a corresponding variety in their 
social arrangements. Hence the great influence which the 
presence of a luxuriant vegetation has on the civilization 
and prosperity of nations. 
But the vegetation of a country is determined by the heat 
