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grasses. There is no land on the globe where some kind of corn or another 
may not be raised. Homer, who had studied nature so accurately, frequently 
characterizes each country by the vegetable peculiar to it. One island he 
celebrates for its grapes, another for its olive-trees, a third for its laurels, and 
a fourth for its palms; but to the earth only he gives the general epithet of 
zsi'Lpa, or corn-bearing . Nature, in fact, has formed it for growing in all 
situations, from the Line to the very border of the Frozen Ocean. One 
species is adapted to the humid places of w r arm countries, as the rice of Asia, 
which grow r s in vast abundance in the muddy swamps by the sides of the 
Ganges. Another is suited to the marshy grounds of cold countries; such 
is a kind of false-oat, which naturally grows on the banks of the rivers of 
North “America, and of which many savage nations annually raise immense 
crops. * 
Other kinds of com thrive wonderfully well on warm and dry lands, as 
the millet and the pannick of Africa, and the mai%e of Brazil. In our 
climates, wheat agrees best with a strong soil, rye with a sandy one, buck¬ 
wheat with rainy declivities, oats with humid plains, barley with stony 
ground. Barley succeeds in the very bosom of the north, I have seen, 
says St. Pierre, as far up as the sixty-first degree of north-latitude, amidst 
the rocks of Finland, crops of this grain as beautiful as ever the plains of 
Palestine produced. 
Cora affords an abundant supply to all the necessities of man. With its 
straw he enjoys the means of lodging, of covering, of warming himself, and 
of feeding his sheep, his cow, and his horse; with its grain he can compound 
aliments and liquors of every flavour. The northern nations brew it into 
beer, and distil from it strong waters, more potent than those from wine; 
such are the distillations of Dantzick. The Chinese f extract from rice a 
wine as agreeable as the best wines of Spain; and the Brazilians prepare 
their ouicou with maize. 
We may distinguish, in the barley and the oats, the elementary 
characters which have been formerly indicated, and which vary the species 
of plants of the same genus, in a conformity to the situations where they are 
designed to grow. The barley destined to dry places has leaves broad and 
* Consult Father Hennepin, a Franciscan; Champlain, and other travellers through North 
America. 
p Journey to China, by Xsbrand-Xdes, 
