ments-how they are produced, whence they are, brought, and by what exertions their appearance at his board has been accomplished?

It is not entirely in relation to their uses that a knowledge of vegetable productions will be attempted to be conveyed in the following pages. Circumstances attend the growth of many even among the plants most familiar to us, which need only to be observed to insure our admiration, and these will be incidentally pointed out. The seed of a globe-turnip is exceedingly minute-not larger perhaps than the twentieth part of an inch in diameter; and yet in the course of a few short months this seed will be elaborated by the soil and the atmosphere into a solid bulb of matter containing, in some cases, twenty-seven millions of times the bulk of the seed, and this in addition to a considerable bunch of leaves. We cannot, in any case, indeed, open a page in the great volume of Nature that is not calculated to excite our highest admiration; that, if read aright, must not incite us onward to the study of her works; or which can fail to raise our grateful hearts towards the Supreme Author of every good.

CHAPTER I.

THE CEREALIA, OR CORN-PLANTS, GENERALLY.

*

ALL vegetable productions which afford food, contain, in some proportion or other, a farinaceous or non-fibrous and granular substance, which, when dried, may be ground or pounded into flour or meal, and which, if boiled in water, will form with it a pulpy substance. This farinaceous constituent of esculent vegetables, the presence of which in some portion appears necessary to the growth of all plants, and which is in perfection only when the plant, of which it forms a part, has attained maturity, has less of an organized structure than is discernible in the membranous and fibrous portions of vegetable growth. In regard to its consistency, this farinaceous principle is found to take a wide range, existing sometimes in the form of an almost limpid fluid, and thence through different degrees of acquiring consistency, called inspissation, until, in some cases, its hardness approaches to that of woody fibre.

Those vegetable substances which contain the largest proportion of farinaceous matter, are on that account the best adapted for human food. Of this kind are seeds and tubers †, when they are ripe, or have attained their full growth. Many plants yielding these are annuals: others, with the exception of their seeds or tubers, die in the autumn, and leave these *From farina, meal.

A tuber is an underground stem, distended by the deposit of farinaceous matter.

as the sources of their reproduction in the following year.

Tubers, equally with seeds, may be considered as store-houses of nutriment for the sustenance of the germ in the early stages of its growth, before its roots and leaves are expanded, and it has thence become capable of assimilating other substances for its own nutrition. Such parts of the plants which answer best for adoption as the substantive food of man, are thus living vegetables in a dormant state; and the moment that the germ which they contain has begun to vegetate, they undergo a change both in regard to their taste and nutritive qualities, and become less qualified for affording nourishment to

man.

Farinaceous seeds are divided into two classes: the first of these are the seeds of annual plants, which are the true grasses, or plants of similar properties. They are styled the CEREALIA*-cornplants, or grain-bearing plants. That one among them upon which any people depends chiefly for its food, is called by that people corn; as wheat in England, oats in the northern lowlands of Scotland, rye in the sandy districts on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, and maize throughout the United States of America.

The second division of farinaceous seeds is also yielded by plants which for the most part are of annual growth, and these seeds being contained in pods or legumes, such plants are styled leguminous or podded: they are likewise known by the generic name of pulse.

The corn plants are all annuals, both in their stems and roots, the whole plant dying after the seed has fully formed and ripened, and sometimes even before the latter process has been perfectly accomplished.

* From Ceres, the goddess of Corn.

They all send up a straw or culm, which is hollow, and divided into lengths by nodes or joints; and at these joints the leaves have their insertion, one at each joint on the alternate sides of the stein; each leaf embraces the stem for some length in the manner of a sheath. It is worthy of remark that these stems always contain a portion of silex, or earth of flint, in a state of very minute division-from which circumstance their ashes are found useful in imparting a polish to articles formed of wood, horn, ivory, or some of the softer metals; while, on the other hand, the presence of this material, and the great difficulty attending its separation from the purely vegetable matter, have always offered obstacles to the em ployment of straw for the manufacture of paper.

The last leaf of the season performs the office of a sheath to the newly-formed flower, embracing it for a time so firmly, that the sheath cannot be opened without difficulty. With the growth of the flower it bursts open its protecting spatha or sheath, rises above it, and the leaf then turns backward.

The head or ear consists of an uncertain number of flowers, followed by seeds. These are sometimes placed upon a single rib or rachis, as in wheat and barley, and they then form a spike. In the variety called Egyptian wheat this spike is compound, there being more than one rachis; if this consists of branches that are naked at their points of junction, and have spikelets at their extremities, they form what is called a panicle: this is the case, for example, with oats.

The chief corn-plants, or cerealia, are wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, rice, and maize. The tribe of cereal grasses is not restricted to these seven varieties, but includes numerous others, which, if they are not equally employed as food, are neglected only on account of the smallness of their seeds. "None are

unwholesome in their natural state, with the single exception of Lolium temulentum (darnel), a common weed in many parts of England, the effects of which are undoubtedly deleterious, although perhaps much exaggerated. In this respect an approach seems to be naturally made to the properties of half-putrid wheat, which are known to be dangerous*."

The presence of the corn-plants in any region of the earth attests that man is there, in an advanced stage of civilization. In the sepulchres of the Egyp tian kings, which were opened by the naturalists and other scientific persons who accompanied the French army to Egypt, was found the common wheat, in vessels which were so perfectly closed, that the grains retained both their form and their colourt. The wheat, buried there for several thousand years, was a proof of the ancient civilization of Egypt, as convincing as the ruins of temples and the inscrip tions of obelisks. The corn-plants, such as they are found under cultivation, do not grow wild in any part of the earth. Wheat has been traced, indeed, in Persia, springing up in spots very remote from human habitation, and out of the line of the traffic of the natives; but this circumstance is far from proving that it is a production natural and indigenous to Persia. In Sicily there is a wild grass called Egilops ovata, which is found in particular districts. It has been held that the seeds of this plant may be changed into corn by cultivation; and that the ancient worship of Ceres, which considered the fields of Enna and of Trinacria as the cradles of agriculture, had its origin in this transformation of the na tive grass. Professor Latapie, of Bourdeaux, affirms, * Lindley's Introduction to the Natural System of Botany,' See Lyell's Geology, vol. ii. p. 81.

p. 302.