GENERAL REMARKS. 
191 
ble instance of flexibility. Even the pine is not very fastidious as to position ; the marsh, 
arid plain, each developing the individual to its greatest dimensions ; but these are not 
very common instances, and when we come to consider the plants nutritious to themammi- 
fera, we find they are bound under the law of conditions and speciality ; and hence it is 
their speciality as to light and shade, heat and cold, dry and wet, and particularly as to 
nutriment, must be studied with care. We are not able, it is true, to command in all 
respects the required conditions; what we may do is to place them in the most favorable 
conditions which our means will admit; shading and lighting, so far as artificial obstruc¬ 
tion is practicable, and drying a soil by deep draining is always possible, and frequently 
wetting the plant by irrigation is equally so. An interesting inquiry relative to the change 
of the product consequent upon a change of place, has been pursued to a limited extent. 
Plants acrid and poisonous, when grown in the marsh, become wholesome and nutritious 
food in the dry garden. The increase of certain elements, as gluten, starch and dextrine, 
in wheat and other cereals—such a result and special adaptations to secure a given result 
will constitute a refined agriculture in time. Change or modification of product by varia¬ 
ble modes of cultivation, will increase the profits of labor ; this result has a different aim 
than the mere development of the individual, though they can not be wholly disconnected : 
the changes of which I have been speaking, are of course limited ; it is not possible to 
modify results so far as to compromise the integrity of the species. Indian corn as may 
be seen on referring to the analyses, is very variable in its composition : sweet corn owes 
its peculiarities to an excessive development of dextrine ; its presence in an excessive 
quantity gives it the peculiarities so remarkable ; shrivelling as if it had not ripened when 
it was gathered ; but still it is Indian corn, though far removed from early Canadian corn. 
There is always a boundary, in which all the changes which a species can undergo, may 
be circumscribed ; and however wide these boundaries are, they can not be said to stretch 
themselves within the paling of another species. Canada corn is as unlike another cereal, 
as Sweet or Tuscarora, or Calico corn, though the latter is very rich in starch; in each of 
these, oil, gluten, dextrine and starch varies. If it were possible to transmute species 
by change of product and variability of elements, we should see the possibility realized 
in the cultivated vegetables. It is under cultivation, that the freest scope is given to 
chemical and physical forces; where the conditions are the most favorable for aiding its 
escape from the bondage of type or cast, from the trammels imposed by a law of nature. 
We can discover, however, only the individual development which makes no advances 
towards a new specific development; and hence we may safely infer that though individual 
change is common, yet it goes not out so far as to inosculate with any existing form be¬ 
longing to a different type ; it is hedged in by impassible barriers'. 
The food of man, as it exists in the cereals and other vegetable products, has been 
developed in them in quantities far greater than they ever produced it in a state of nature. 
The cereals then exist in a forced or unnatural state, and hence in addition to the ordi¬ 
nary agents, as light, heat and moisture, the soil in which they have been made to grow, 
