to the refreshment and the productiveness of all around them. In countries which are uncultivated the weather is mostly in extremes. Rain, when it comes, takes the form of an overwhelming flood, not gently entering into and moistening the soil, but rushing along the surface, tearing up one place, strewing another with the debris, and reducing both to a state of indiscriminate ruin; while scarcely has the flood gone by, when the returning heat evaporates the little moisture which is left behind, and burns up the coarse and scanty vegetation which the rains had fostered.

These effects of the unmitigated action of the elements are most strongly marked in those parts of the world where hitherto the seasons have defied the labour of man, and have seemed to wage war upon his agriculture. This is the case in some parts of India, in Southern Africa, and in a great part of what we yet know of Australia, where at one time the earth is parched up, and the beds of rivers become dry channels or unconnected pools, while at another they suddenly pour onward to the sea in a wide spreading inundation, or roll their rapid floods in narrow but deepened channels. That the labours of cultivation exert the most beneficial effect upon climate may be shown, by contrasting the waste and uncultivated parts of our own country with other parts in the same latitude, and at the same elevation above the level of the sea, but which are in a state of high cultivation. In these, while the immediate object of providing a certain and abundant supply of food has been accomplished by the labours of man, an indirect influence has been exerted scarcely less beneficial, by rendering the country in general more healthy and agreeable.

In the central parts of Scotland, where the introduction of agricultural improvements has been much

more recent than in England, but where, owing to causes whose investigation would be misplaced in these pages, their progress has been much more rapid, the change of climate has fully kept pace with those improvements. It is within the experience of persons still living, to have noticed that the snow, which in that country formerly began to fall in November, was not wholly gone until the month of April; while in the middle of summer the heat was so excessive that agricultural labourers were obliged to suspend their toil during four or five hours in the middle of the day. At that time the autumnal rains frequently descended with so much violence, that the crops, which had been retarded by the coldness of the spring, were prevented from ripening on the high grounds, were lodged and rotted on lands that were lower, and swept away by the swelling of the streams over the holms and meadows. In the same spots, at the present day, the quantity of snow which usually falls during the winter is comparatively small, appears rarely before Christmas, and is gone in February, or early in March. The summer heat is more uniformly distributed, seldom amounting to a degree oppressive to the labourer, or protracted to a term injurious to the crops; while the rain which follows is neither so violent in degree, nor so long continued, and happening when the grain is far advanced towards ripeness, the injury which it does is comparatively trifling.

This mitigation of the seasons, which is wholly referrible to the progress of cultivation, has had the happiest effect upon the health of the inhabitants. Diseases, which formerly paid their periodical visits with distressing regularity, have either been wholly put to flight, or have been deprived of the terrors in which they were clothed; the supply of

food, which rested upon contingencies beyond control or calculation, has been secured with a comparative certainty; and famines, which commonly recurred at periods only a few years apart, are now happily unknown, except in some of the very wildest districts, and then only at very distant intervals.

We propose, as far as can be accomplished within narrow limits, to trace the progress of our own country towards one of the chief objects and indications of civilization,—that of obtaining an abundance and a variety of wholesome and agreeable vegetable food, at the cheapest rate, and with unfailing regu larity, for increasing inhabitants. This great object

principally accomplished by the natural progress of a people in knowledge and industry. It is advanced by good commercial laws; it is retarded by bad. But if the general laws of a country have the effect of rendering industry free and property secure, it will go forward, without the assistance of governments, and in spite of that assistance, too often misdirected an embarrassment instead of a help. As we trace this advance of civilization, we first find that famines, once the unfailing scourges of a country, occur at longer and longer intervals, till at last they disappear altogether. We next perceive that seasons of scarcity, producing much severe misery, though not to be compared in their desolating effects to famines, become also fewer and fewer. Lastly, we discover that, though the great necessary of life, bread, may be dearer in one year than in another, the fluctuations in price are seldom extreme and never sudden. If we investigate the causes of these remarkable circumstances, which always attend a very advanced state of society, we shall find that they are not to be ascribed to the vigilance of the soundest legislation, or to the provident foresight of the wisest ministers; but to the spirit of commerce,

pursuing its natural course without interference from the cumbrous aid of a government, or the opposing prejudices of a people. When a nation has become accustomed to the best food, instead of habitually resorting to the lowest, which it can only do by its steady but certain progress in industry and a taste for comforts;-when the intercourse between all parts of a country is certain and rapid ;-when large capitals may be safely and profitably employed in storing corn in seasons of abundance to meet the exigencies of a season of scarcity;—when such vegetable productions of other lands, as will endure to be naturalized, can be grown in plenty at every man's door; and, lastly, when foreign commerce places the natural productions of every country within our reach in exchange for our own natural productions,then, and not till then, can a nation be said to be so advanced in civilization, as to have secured, as far as possible, a constant supply of the best vegetable food that the earth can furnish, at a price accessible to the great mass of consumers.

The particular circumstances which advance or retard this desirable end, will be (as far as may be done without touching upon disputable points) brought out in the following pages. The general subject will embrace a history of the vegetable food of our people, as dependent upon agriculture, gardening, commerce; and that history will be illustrated by notices of the food of other great bodies of mankind. The subject will necessarily involve a few details of vegetable physiology, and of practical agriculture and horticulture; but it must be evident, that any scientific description of the structure of plants, however interesting, would be as much out of place here, as any minute accounts of farming and gardening processes. Our desire is to excite attention to some of those ordinary circumstances in the

condition of mankind which have such powerful effects upon the advance of the world in knowledge and happiness. In this point of view, a blade of wheat, a potato, or a peppercorn, may each be made a theme to direct the attention to some of the most important causes of the prosperity of nations; and the result of such observation and inquiry must necessarily be a conviction, that all human interests are strictly allied, and that the great mutual necessities which bind mankind together are steadily going forward to break down the barriers which separate classes and nations, and to diffuse knowledge, and plenty the fruit of knowledge, over all the earth.

In the study, then, of this subject, all who are engaged in the culture of the soil, whether the wealthy proprietor who draws from his estates a lordly revenue, the farmer who earns from his fields an independent subsistence, or the peasant whose toil obtains from the little nook which joins his cottage a wholesome meal for his family, may draw from the pursuit the means of mental improvement. Those, too, whose callings or professions shut them out from the contemplation of rural objects, may derive both pleasure and advantage from knowing by what care a grain of wheat is elaborated into the material of a loaf of bread, and how that loaf is supplied with regularity both at seed-time and at harvest. Lastly, each and all may, with equal profit, acquire some information concerning that almost countless number of foreign productions, which commerce has brought to form a part of the daily food and comfort of almost the humblest of our fellow-citizens. it not in fact appear natural, it might almost be said inevitable, that every one should feel an interest in prosecuting inquiries as to things to which he is indebted for so many of his daily comforts and enjoy

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