according as the Gospel is valued or despised, will a country flourish or decay. Let Sabbath-desecration continue to increase, as it undoubtedly is doing at this present time let popery* be supported, and endowed, and patronised, as it is at this present periodlet a system of purely secular education be generally established, and then we can no longer expect the glory of England to shine as brightly as hitherto, nor the blessing of God to rest upon us to the same extent, I would therefore urge upon all the duty of communicating religious knowledge to the heathen, because its value is paramount to all others, its blessings greater, its benefits more permanent. It is too truly observed, in a late report of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, that the spiritual wants of our various settlements have hitherto been too much neglected. Great Britain has planted her colonies in America and Australia, and peopled these immense territories with her sons and daughters; she has paid a large price for the freedom of the negroes; established a mild parental authority over Hindostan; and transported many thousand convicts to the shores of New South Wales: but throughout the course of these mighty operations, "the one thing needful" has been too little regarded, the interests of religion too much neglected, and the glory of God too often forgotten. Instead of the conversion of these nations being, as it ought to be, the first consideration with Christian England, it has been, in too many instances, the last; and we seem quite to have forgotten that the heathen had souls to save as well as ourselves a hell to escape, a heaven to win. It is only lately that Christians have begun to see the duty of promoting the conversion of the heathen, and are becoming alive to the value of missionary labours. But we shall be able to form a better idea of the immense value of missionary exertions, and the great need there is of them, by considering the present state of the world. The population of the whole globe may be estimated, in round numbers, at ten hundred millions. Of these, about one third only, or 330,000,000, are Christians; and no less than two-thirds, or about 660,000,000, are still heathens, ignorant of the one true God and of his Son Jesus Christ. And were I to proceed to give an account of the present condition of each of these heathen countries, I should present such a statement as would harrow the mind and shock the feelings. There is no end to the barbarities, the misery, and the crimes of the poor benighted heathen. But without dilating further upon this subject, I • See "England the Fortress of Christianity," by Dr. Croly. will lay before my readers an account of the present state of China, which I have taken from the 5th number of the "Missionary Gleaner." In describing the condition of this country, the writer goes on to observe," there is also another feature in the character of Chinese society, which perhaps, more clearly than any thing else, will serve to shew the degraded and miserable condition of the inhabitants. We allude to the treatment the female sex experience. Education and religion are both withheld from them. They are not even allowed to visit the temples where the prayers of the unfortunate are supposed to find access. Indeed, from the period of their birth they are subjected to the most dreadful and cruel treatment. The destruction of female infants by their unnatural parents is most common. In some provinces not one in three is allowed to live; and in the poorer parts of the empire, the difference between the male and female population is said to be as one to ten. In the city of Pekin, the traveller Barrow witnessed scenes which are almost incredible. The carts go through the streets in the morning to pick up the bodies of infants cast out during the night, amounting on an average to 40,000 every year; the bodies thus found are carried to a common pit without the city-walls, into which the living and dead are thrown together. The number destroyed in this city, however, is small, compared with other places. The practice prevails in proportion to the poverty of the people. And so lightly is this fearful crime regarded, that the mother can destroy her offspring in a laughing mood. An English missionary, on landing in China, observed the body of an infant lying upon the beach; and upon asking the Chinese boatmen to remove it, they answered, 'O never mind; it is only a girl.' The same individual mentions his having met with a Chinese, at a distance from his own country, when the following conversation occurred. The Chinese said he had three sons and one daughter in China. I had another daughter,' he added, but I did not bring her up.' 'Not bring her up!' I said; 'what then did you do with her?' 'I smothered her,' said he. What!' said the missionary, smother your own child?' Yes,' replied the Chinese; and since I have been here, I have heard of the birth of another daughter, and I wrote to my wife to have her destroyed also.' I was shocked at the speech, and at the extreme indifference with which he uttered it; and I asked, 'Do you not shudder at such an act as this?' O no,' he replied; it is a very common thing in China: we put the female children out of the way, to save the trouble and But I will not dwell upon this subject. Enough has been said to prove that the description given of the heathen by St. Paul, in this particular at least, closely applies to the inhabitants of this dark and degraded land-"without natural affection, unmerciful." And are not the facts that have been brought forward sufficient to convict them of the charge, that "destruction and misery are in their ways?" And is it possible we can know these things, and not make some effort to prevent them? Can we be aware that millions of our fellow-creatures are thus sunk in the most debasing superstition and degrading idolatry, and not make some endeavour to impart to them the knowledge of the truth, and thus save them from everlasting destruction? What would have been the condition of Christian England, if no missionary had ever come to our shores-if we had been left to follow the devices and desires of our own evil hearts? Whatever infidels may now affirm, and scoffers allege, it is Christianity which has made us to differ, and given to Britain the first place among the nations of the earth. And in asking you, my readers, to contribute to this object, I do so with the less hesitation, because I ask of you to contribute something for the glory of God, and the good of your fellow-creatures. It is a very homely, but a very true observation, that we never lose what we give in charity. In other words, I beg of you to call to mind the promise of the Lord your God, who to encourage you has said, Look, what ye lay out, it shall be paid you again. For "God is not unrighteous, that he will forget your works and labour that proceedeth of love; which love ye have shewed for his name's sake, who have ministered to the saints, and yet do minister." If God has blessed you with this world's goods, O give some portion of them again to him-spend some of it in his service, and for the spiritual welfare of his people. And give liberally; for he that soweth little shall reap little, and he that soweth plenteously shall reap plenteously; for God loveth a cheerful giver. Let me remind you, that a time is coming, when they who have given little in God's service will mourn over such neglect; and if there be any such who read these lines, let me earnestly beg of them to look to the future-to that day when Christ shall say to such, "I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was in prison, and ye visited me not for inasmuch as ye did it not to these little ones, ye did it not to me." And O that any thing that I could ad vance might not only rouse my readers to contribute cheerfully and liberally to the missionary cause, but induce some to go forth themselves as missionaries to convert the heathen. I have no wish to see those who are usefully engaged in the Lord's vineyard at home, leave their labours at home to engage in others abroad. But I do long, earnestly long, to see more candidates for this high and holy calling amongst those who are unemployed. I long to see some, who, in the spirit and with the feelings of Henry Martyn, can bid adieu to their native shores, and joyfully engage in this great and glorious work. Let such bear in mind the engaging promise of our Saviour, "that every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or children, for my sake, shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life." God grant that some one from amongst us may step forth, and say, in the words of the prophet of old, "Here I am; send me." Sacred Philosophy. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATURAL THEO. "O Nature, many a lesson could'st thou give, Mrs. WILLIAM HEY's Spirit of the Woods. IN the foregoing paper it was remarked, as a peculiarity in the members of the vegetable kingdom, that the process of flowering and ripening the fruit and seeds was the supreme object of the existence of each individual plant. Provision is thus made to ensure the continuation of the species; so that of all the Almighty, in the last putting forth of his creative plants which were evoked out of nothing by the power, at the commencement of the present order of things, to clothe the surface of the globe with verdant beauty, and supply food to the members of the animal kingdom, probably "not one faileth;" but their descendants and representatives, preserving their types, their forms, and uses, bear testimony at this day to the stated fulfilment of the merciful promise, that "while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease." To accomplish this end, a relation, often very close, subsists between the process of flowering and the duration of the stem, or the entire plant. The period when this function is exercised by a plant varies, not merely in the different species and tribes of plants, but frequently in the same species, not only in distant parts, but even in the same country, according to circumstances. The chief cause of difference is the difference in the intensity of the physical agents which operate as stimuli to plants, at once causing the de velopment of their external organs, and exciting them to the exercise of the functions with which the re spective organs have been endowed. The main source of difference in the degree of the intensity of the physical agents (light and heat being the most important of these), is the difference of position of the part of the earth's surface where the ment of life, unless necessary, and also unwilling to die and make no sign. plant grows; in one word, the difference of climate, | appearing, as it were, averse to surrender the enjoywhich expresses the fact better than to say the difference of longitude and latitude, as these are by no means the only elements of the difference. (See Humboldt's Les Lignes Isothermes.*) A difference of season, or the lateness of the period of the year when a seed is sown, will be in some measure equivalent to a difference of climate. The early or late arrival of these conditions, in connexion also with certain peculiarities of structure in the stem, to be afterwards explained, regulates in a great measure the date of flowering of plants. The elaboration of a sufficient quantity of nutritive juice may be accomplished in some climates in a very few years; while three or four times that period may be required in others. Thus the Agave americana (American aloe) flowers in hot countries at the end of three or four years, while in temperate climes it rarely does so under fifty or sixty years, and it is popularly said, a hundred years; but this is seldom the case. Yet, wherever it be, or however long or short may be the period it has existed, it perishes so soon as the fruits and seeds are matured. So also the Corypha umbraculifera (the talipot or umbrella-palm of Ceylon) "remains, without attempting to flower, for thirty-five or forty years, growing in that time to the height of seventy feet; in the space of four months from that time it rises thirty feet higher, puts forth its flowers and fruit (which may amount to 30,000) the same year; which done, it totally dies, both root and stem." Such also is the case with the Mauritia flexuosa (the sago-palm of the Orinoco); and when once the fruc❘tification is completed, nothing can save its lofty and elegant stem from perishing. A division is commonly made of plants into annual, biennial, and perennial. The first of these terms is intended to import that the seed germinates, produces leaves, flowers, ripens its seeds, and perishes, within twelve months, or less time; the second, that a plant germinates, and produces leaves the first year, but does not throw up a flower-stem, or ripen seed, till the second year, after which it perishes; while the third intimates, that the process of flowering and fructification may be postponed till the third year, or any indefinite period: moreover, that the first two exercise the function of flowering, in general, once only; while the latter may exercise it once, or several times. Nothing can be more arbitrary than the terms above indicated, inasmuch as, under different climates, or under different modes of management, the same species may prove annual, biennial, or even perennial. Thus, in our own country, the common wheat is annual, if sown early in spring; but biennial, if sown late in autumn-the process of flowering being postponed till the second year, because the shorter number of hours of sunshine, and the diminished intensity of solar light, as well as the reduced temperature, incapacitate the leaves from elaborating a sufficient quantity of nutritive juice for the use of the flower and fruit. In a large number of esculent roots-such as the carrot, turnip, parsnip, &c.,-the juices prepared by the leaves in the first summer are stored up in the root; but during the following season withdrawn, and transferred to the flower, fruit, and seed; and when this has taken place, the root consists of mere fibres and cells devoid of nutritious principles. Man, in the exercise of his rights as lord of creation, steps in, and appropriates to himself the materials prepared by the plant for its own use, leaving a certain proportion untouched to continue | into polycarpic, or those which flower and ripen the race. It is the quantity of these juices which a plant can elaborate in a given time which mostly determines the period of flowering, and the consequent death of such plants as flower once only. Farther, so long as a plant has an unrestricted range of extension by the roots, and an unimpaired supply of nutriment in the soil, it will continue to grow, by forming branches covered with green leaves, rather than commence the process of flowering. But should any thing limit these conditions, or, to use a figure of speech, should the plant, from any circumstance, become alarmed for its existence, it will immediately take on the process of flowering, and, by forming seeds, throw its vital principle into a latent or dormant state, by which it may survive through a period of cold, or be transferred to a new soil • See Humboldt, Mémoires d'Arceuil; Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vols. iii., iv., and v.; and Traill's Treatise on Physical Geography. + The seeds of plants, and the eggs of insects, can sustain a reduction of temperature which would prove fatal to the living plant or butterfly. This is proved, not only by what happens in very severe winters, but also by some direct experiments of Spallanzani and of John Hunter. "I have exposed eggs to a more rigorous trial than the winter of 1709. Those of several insects, and among others the silkworm, moth, and elmbutterfly, were enclosed in a glass-vessel, and buried five hours in a mixture of ice and salt. The thermometer fell 6o below zero. In the middle of the following spring, however, caterpillars came from all the eggs, and at the same time as those which had suffered no cold. in the following year I subinitted them to an experiment still more hazardous. A freezing mixture reduced the thermometer 22o below zero, that is, 23o lower than the cold of 1709. They were not injured, as I had evident proof by their being hatched." -JOHN HUNTER. On the opposite hand, the common rye-grass (which is termed Lolium perenne), if sown in a hot climate, proves annual; while the Ricinus communis (castor-oil plant), which in Italy and Greece is a shrub of several years' duration, in all the northern parts of Europe, where it can be cultivated, proves annual. The little soft mignonette (Reseda odorata) may easily be changed from an annual to a shrubby and perennial plant (called the tree-mignonette), by removing the flower-buds the first year, and keeping it in a proper temperature during the winter.t A more accurate division of plants, as connected with flowering and fructification, is into monocarpic, or those which flower but once, and perish; and seeds several times before the entire plant, root and branch, perish. Thus the garden-pea, the bean, which seed and die the first year, as well as the agave and talipot-palm, are monocarpic, though the last two are so long and variable in the period when they exercise this function; while the strawberry, the plum, apple, oak, and beech trees, are polycarpic. Plants which are, in temperate climates, generally annual and monocarpic, offer greater facilities for being rendered perennial and polycarpic than plants which are in most cases biennial; for though these may be rendered annual, no contrivance can render them polycarpic or perennial. If biennial plants are prevented, by any cause, flowering and fruiting the first or second year, they wither away, • A plant of it, placed out, when only three years old and six inches high, in the open ground of the garden of Mr. Yates, at Saltcombe Bay, in Devonshire, in the year 1804, had attained, in 1820, a height of eleven feet, and covered a space of ground the diameter of which was sixteen feet; when it threw up a flower-stem, which grew for six weeks at the rate of three inches a day, and in September measured twenty-seven feet in height; its branches being loaded with 16,000 blossoms. See LOUDON'S Arboretum Britannicum, 2529. In the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris (where the mean annual temperature is 51-50, though the mean of the summer-months is 64-47), a plant of the Fourcræa gigantea (analogous to the agave) had existed for nearly a century without flowering, till the hot summer of 1793, when it threw out a flower-stem, which grew to the length of 224 feet in eighty-seven days, or rather more than three inches per day. The rate was not uniform, inasmuch as during cold days it scarcely made any progress; while during some very warm ones it increased nearly a foot. † Pepin, Moyen de convertir les Plantes annuelles en Plantes vivaces et en Plantes ligneuses, -in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, nouvelle série, tome Gième, p. 410. and no longer cumber the ground; but yield it up to some more profitable occupant. Such at least is the case generally; though, either from the temperature being too low to allow the processes of flowering and maturing the seeds to take place, or from removing the ears on their first appearance, wheat may continue to vegetate for two or three years; as may be observed in the northern parts of Britain, when in cold, wet seasons the grain does not ripen. But in no instance does the stalk of wheat survive after it has flowered, and produce seed a second time. The cereal grains, by which is meant those members of the grass tribe, the seeds of which constitute so large a proportion of the food of man, over a great extent of the earth's surface, belong to the section of monocarpic plants; and though they oscillate between the first and second year of their existence, in respect of flowering, yet their range cannot be lengthened, or their nature changed, either by change of climate, or by artificial processes; for they never become either perennial or polycarpic. The profitable culture of wheat and oats, i. e. as grain-producing plants, ceases at that point of northern latitude where the cold is such as to render a diet almost exclusively animal absolutely necessary to maintain the life of man. therefore, though beyond this point they might grow as far as leaves are concerned, they cannot be induced to ripen seeds. And The most important of the cereal grains are, wheat, both common and spelt (Triticum), rye, barley, and oats, for Europe and the neighbouring parts of Asia; rice, and various sorts of millet, for the whole south and east of Asia; maize or Indian corn for America; and panicled millet (Sorghum vulgare Willdenow), called also Guinea-corn, or negro-millet, along with Eleusine coracana and Poa abyssinica, for Africa.* They have the general property of the grass tribe, of growing in considerable quantities together, or being social; while some plants seem to have such an antipathy to the presence of one of the same species, that two are never found on the same spot. Another interesting point in their character is the circumstance, that they can arrive at perfection under a greater variety of circumstances, and diversities of climate; in short, are possessed of capabilities to enjoy a wider geographical range than probably any other kinds of plants.† Thus wheat, which is unquestionably the most valuable of all the cereal grains, as containing the most gluten, and therefore the best fitted to make good bread, can grow, and produce seeds, retaining all their useful qualities, over an extent of the earth's surface which enhances its utility to an amazing degree. Before specifying some of the facts connected with this subject, let a few of an opposite kind be stated, for the sake of contrast. Thus the Origanum Tournefortii, discovered by Tournefort on one rock of the small island of Amorgos, in the Grecian Archipelago, was again discovered by Sibthorp, more than eighty years afterwards, in the same island, and on the same rock; but no one has ever found it elsewhere. Two orchideous plants, the Disa longicornis and the Cymbidium tabulare, grow on the Tablemountain and the Cape of Good Hope, but no other place. Wheat, however, though it" demands a warmer climate than barley or oats,"§ can be reared wherever the mean temperature of the whole year is not under 39° Fahr.; and the mean of the summer-heat is, for a period of at least three or four months, above 55o. • See some account of most of these in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge-Vegetable Substances used for the Food of Man. "A great many plants will hardly, with nursing, be made to produce their seed out of their native soil; but corn, so necessary for all people, is fitted to grow and to seed as a free denizen of the world."-GREW. 1 See Davy's Agricultural Chemistry, p. 131, 5th edit. 1836; or Marcet's Conversations on Vegetable Physiology, p. 423, 8d edit. 1839. § See Barton's Lecture on the Geography of Plants. Nevertheless, it succeeds best on the limits of the subtropical region, i. e. in the 34th and 38th degrees of both north and south latitude, producing there the most abundant harvests. It does not endure well the heat of tropical regions, and therefore is only cultivated in such parts of them as, by their elevated position, correspond to a great degree in climate with subtropical and temperate regions. Notwithstanding these limitations to its universal cultivation, it is yet advantageously grown over a very large extent of the earth's surface; many of the most important and admirable contrivances which conduce to diversify the climate of different parts of the world, conducing also to bring about the conditions essential to the growth and perfection of this most useful plant. Thus, though the cultivation of wheat is not very considerable at so northern a point, it yet reaches to the 64th degree of north latitude on the western side of the Scandinavian peninsula; while it is more common at the 62d, and still more so at the 60th degree. The height to which the temperature rises, and at which it for a certain period remains, in these almost polar countries, enables the wheat to ripen its seeds.* On the opposite hand, at Victoria, in the vicinity of the Caracas, wheat is cultivated at so low a point on the sides of the mountains as 1,600 feet above the level of the sea, in a district within less than ten degrees of the equator; and in the island of Cuba (still within the tropics), in a district termed Las Quatro Villas, at a still lower point; while in the Isle of France it is cultivated down to the very shores of the ocean. like circumstance is remarked in the island of Luçon, within fourteen degrees of the equator; where, however, by the agency of the prevailing monsoons, the mean temperature is much reduced. A In Chili and the states of Rio de la Plata, one of which countries is tropical, the other extra-tropical, the cultivation of wheat is carried on from the shores of the ocean to the height of 5,200 feet. In the middle of the temperate zone of Europe, to wit in France, the culture of wheat cannot be attempted at a greater altitude than 5,400 feet; but in Mexico the cultivation of it only commences at 2,500 or 3,000 feet; and in the district from Vera Cruz to Acapulco it begins at 3,600 feet, and ascends even above 9,000. On the plain of Southern Peru, at the height of 8,000 feet, are wheat-fields of extraordinary productiveness; and by Cangallo, at the base of the volcano of Arequipa, at an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet, the wheat succeeds marvellously. On the Himalaya mountains wheat is occasionally seen at 12,000 feet of elevation.f Much below this, on these mountains, in places possessing during the wet summer-months a tropical temperature, and ripening tropical fruits and grains, wheat is cultivated during the dry or winter period. So likewise on the Neclgheries. A similar plan is adopted in the neighbourhood of Canton. "There is a remarkable uniformity," says Prof. Moseley, "of extreme summer heat. Over eight-ninths of the habitable surface of the globe, and to 300 of the pole, the thermometer attains in summer within a few degrees of the same height. It rises every year at St. Petersburg above 909; and on the coast of Guinea, and in Senegal, it is rarely observed to exceed 95o. There is no greater error than to suppose that a perpetual cold reigns in high latitudes. Moscow has the summer heat of Nantes; and even in Norway, in latitude 70°, or within 20o of the pole, the thermometer not unfrequently rises to 80o. Under the influence of this genial summer's heat, vegetation spreads itself, as the sun advances northwards from the equator, to within a narrow circle surrounding the pole."-Church of England Magazine, vol. iv. p. 357. ↑ Royle's Flora of the Himalaya, p. 19. In the Map of Asia, in Mr. Barton's Lecture on the Geography of Plants, wheat is stated to grow at 15,000 feet; but this must be the Tartarian buck-wheat, Polygonum tataricum, and not a triticum. Captain Scoresby speaks of an influence of the sun's rays at Melville Island, lat. 74o 30', under which the pitch on the side of his vessel was melted, and a thermometer placed against it indicated 800 or 900. For an explanation of the physical causes of this, see Professor Moseley's paper, ibid. In so great a diversity of places is wheat thus enabled to grow, from finding the conditions necessary for its perfection. These are supplied to it by a still greater diversity of causes-some which have the effect of raising the temperature during the season of its growth in the nearly polar regions; and others of reducing it to the requisite degree in tropical climes. The altitude of the mountains is one important cause of this in some of the places mentioned; while the monsoons seem the chief cause of it in the others. It will ripen more expeditiously in certain regions than in others; but wherever a given amount of heat is ensured, the seeds will reach maturity. "The number of days which separate the commencement of vegetation of an annual plant and its maturity, is, in every climate, in the inverse ratio of the mean temperature of the place, under the influence of which the vegetation takes place; so that the product of the number of days by the temperature is constant. The result indicates that the same annual plant receives in the course of its existence the same quantity of heat every where."* In colder regions, whether from the more northern position, or from the altitude of the spot, if wheat cannot be reared, still barley, rye, or oats, may supply its place. These can withstand a greater cold than wheat, and are the only cereal grains cultivated in high latitudes. Thus, in the Scandinavian peninsula, the cultivation of barley extends to the 70o of north latitude, rye to the 67°, and oats to the 65°. Farther, at elevations on the mountains where wheat fails, barley succeeds. In South Lapland, in 67o north latitude, barley stretches up even to 800 feet; in France, rye extends even up to 6,600 feet. In the high-lying plains of Peru, barley and rye rarely grow above 10,000 feet; but oats ripen near the Sea of Titicaca at the height of 12,700. In Chile, between Quillota and Valparaiso, barley does not grow above 5,200 feet; but on the Himalaya it is met with so high up as 13,000 feet. The cereal grain, however, on which a greater number of mankind subsists than on any other is rice (Oriza sativa). Besides being found wild in South America, where it is collected, but not cultivated, by the native Indians, near the Rio Negro, Para, and the Rio Iraria, a branch of the Rio Madeira, the cultivation of rice prevails in eastern and southern Asia, where it furnishes the staple article of food; also in Northern Africa, in Egypt, in Nubia, Persia, Arabia, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and the southern part of Portugal, in Spain and France, it is a common article of subsistence. The culture of rice has been carried by Europeans to America; in the tropical and subtropical, and even other regions of which, rice is very extensively raised. Not only in the southern parts of North America, but in Venezuela, in Brazil, and the West Indian Islands, rice is cultivated; the quantity produced in Brazil alone being altogether extraordinary. Two varieties of rice are cultivated, and each is suited for peculiar localities, and requires a different mode of culture. The most common of the two is the swamp-rice, which thrives best in water, the fields where it grows being periodically irrigated, and the water drained off at a particular stage of the growth of the plant. "In Southern China the rice-fields cover not merely the whole flat grounds, but stretch up high on the hills. These fields are irrigated with water, which either descends from the hills, or is pumped up from a low-lying field into a higher one in succession, till by this means the water is raised in this land of wonders upwards of a thousand feet." The hill-rice is the variety cultivated in mountainous regions, and is • Examen comparatif des Circonstances météorologiques sous lesquelles les Céréales, &c. par M. Boussingault, in the Bibliothèque Universelle, nouvelle série, tom. zième, p. 422. † Meyen, Pflanzen-Geographie. adopted where forests are abundant, and the population is scanty; as a preliminary to its cultivation is the burning down of the forests, and sowing the rice on the ashes. This plan is pursued in Sumatra, Java, Luçon, and Brazil. Another grain very largely consumed for food in the hotter parts of the world, is maize, or Indian corn (Zea mays). It succeeds best in the hottest and dampest parts of tropical climates, where it is incredibly productive; yet it may be reared, though with diminished returns, even as far as the 40° of latitude north and south in the American continent, at least on the western side; while in Europe it can grow even in the 50° or 52° latitude. Though a native of the New World, its culture has extended to many parts of the Old from a very early period; and it is met with in India, China, Japan, Sumatra, and the Philippine Islands. It is now cultivated in all regions in the tropical and temperate zones which are colonised by Europeans. Though it thrives best in the hottest localities, it nevertheless can grow at immense heights in the mountains of America. In Mexico, at a height of 8,680 feet, extensive fields of it are seen; and in Peru, at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet. Millet of different kinds, especially the Sorghum vulgare, or negro-corn, is cultivated. The latter sort is met with in all the hottest parts of Africa, in the south of Europe, in Asia Minor, and the East Indies. Though a plant of hot regions, it can grow at very considerable elevations on the mountains of India. To these grains may be added the potatoe, the culture of which is not only widely diffused over Europe, even to 71° of latitude, as well as along a vast length of the Andes, where it is native, but likewise in New Holland, New Zealand, the South Sea Islands, China, India, and Japan. The return from these various plants differs not only among themselves, but also according to the soil, climate, and method of cultivation. In the colder parts of Europe the return from wheat is on an average only 5 or 6 fold. In Hungary, Croatia, and Sclavonia, it amounts to 8 or 10 fold; but in the district of La Plata it is 12 fold, in Northern Mexico 17, and in the hotter parts of Mexico it is 24, or, in very productive years, 35 fold. The highest amount is infinitely below that of the maize in the same country, which frequently yields 200 fold, or more. In the hottest parts of the world where maize is grown it increases 800 fold; in less favourable places, 300 or 400 fold; while in California it hardly yields more than 70 fold; progressively diminishing with the fall of temperature. Rice is superior perior to wheat, not only in productiveness, but also in the quantity of starch contained in a given weight. It is, however, inferior to maize in the amount of the crop. Mountain-rice, grown on newly cleared spots, where the forests have recently been burnt down, gives a return of 60 or 80 fold; but in other places not more, on an average, than 40 fold. Swamp-rice yields often 100 or 120 fold; sometimes considerably less. By means of repeated transplantings, it can be made to yield, in some parts of the Philippine Islands, so much as 400 fold. Thus over an extent of the earth's surface which may be reckoned not less than two-thirds of the habitable portion, the cereal grains flourish, and pour into the granaries of man one of the most necessary articles for his subsistence. The increase or return of these plants, though limited by climate, is more subject to his control than most other vegetable substances; and improved methods of culture always lead to an augmentation of produce. So much is this the case, that the native country of many of them, as wild plants, is unknown; the originals of them being probably so small as not to be recognised as the sources of the well-grown and prolific plants of man's toils and hopes. The culture of wheat seeins to have commenced in the East; but whether on the borders of |