700 REVIEWS. 
PART 11. 
REVIEWS AND EXTRACTS. 
REVIEWS. 
LIBRARY OF ENTERTAINING KNOWLEDGE, Vol, 1.3. 
Vegetable substances used for the food of man. — Amongst the 
great variety of scientific and useful publications of late issued from the press, 
none appear to us to claim more attention, as entertaining and useful works, 
than those published under the superintendance of the 'Society for the diffusion 
of useful knowledge. The great fund of information is concentrated in each of 
their small, cheap, and comprehensive volumes, together with the valuable ster- 
ling worth of the works fi'om which many of the extracts are taken, place very 
much valuable instruction in the hands of those, who otherwise might have been 
profoundly ignorant on the subjects. The present volume contains 396 pages 
of letter-press, together with upwards of seventy illustrative wood-cuts. 
It treats of all the different species and varieties of vegetable productions used 
for the food of man, tracing each, as much as possible, to the origin of its 
use and cultivation. The whole is interspersed with numerous lively extracts 
from ancient works of merit, that it is in reality part of a " Library of En- 
tertaining Knowledge. The culture of the earth is a pursuit which, in itself 
offers a sufficient distinction, not only between man and the inferior orders of 
animate creation, but also between man while in his merely animal state, and 
after he has become humanized by adopting the arts of civilization. That man 
who first, among a tribe of hunters or fishers, sows a grain or plants a root, and 
thus brings home the advantages of forethought to the business and the bosoms 
of his less provident fellows, becomes their benefactor, not merely by pointing 
out the means for avoiding the horrors of famine, and for lessening that succes- 
sion of miseries, which must attend upon a wandering life, but also by relieving 
their minds from the selfish exigences that previously attended every moment, 
affording thereby leisure and opportunity for cultivating the social and kindly 
affections. It is not until men have placed themselves beyond that state of 
merely physical existence, wherein the plenty of to-day may be followed by the 
destitution of to-morrow, that the higher faculties and feelings of our nature can 
be expanded. Vegetables form the primary source of sustenance to every thing 
that lives. Were the earth without them, the effects of heat and cold, of drought 
and rain, would be so violent, that apart from all considerations as to food, the 
whole world would speedily become uninhabitable. Frosts and droughts would 
break, and the returning water would wash away the surface, until the whole 
would become one wide and swampy waste. The presence of vegetation pre- 
vents this desolating action, and converts what would otherwise be destructive 
agents, into ministers of abundance. No vegetable productions tend so much to 
