Still further southward, maize and rice come into cultivation along with wheat, and enter largely into the constituents of human food. Portugal and Spain, that part of France which borders on the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, and Greece, are thus circumstanced.

Eastward, in Persia, Northern India, and Arabia, and southward, in Nubia, Egypt, and Barbary, wheat is indeed found; but maize, rice, and millet, form the principal materials for human subsistence. The grains which form the chief objects of cultivation in our division of the globe, are rarely seen in China and Japan, owing, it is believed, more to the taste of the inhabitants, than the character of the soil and climate. There, the staple production for food is rice. In that empire, agriculture is greatly encouraged; and even the emperors of China have not disdained to hold the plough, and place their fame on the ground of agricultural improvements. The wellknown denseness of the population in these regions may be considered as both the cause and the consequence of this feature in the national character.

Of the countries which lie between the tropics, those of Asia adopt principally the use of rice, while maize is the common food of the Americans. For this distribution there exists a natural reason, Asia being the native region of rice, while America is that of maize. In most parts of Africa, the two grains are used indifferently, and in nearly equal proportions.

In America, which comprises climates analogous to those in every other quarter of the globe, we find all the varieties of grain culture I have already enumerated. The highest limit for the cultivation of the cereal plants is to be found in the southern part of the Russian possessions in that great continent, situated between 57° and 58° of north latitude, where barley and rye are brought to maturity. In the more eastern parts, the same cultivation rarely succeeds higher than 50° or 51°. In Canada, and in the northern parts of the United States, barley, oats, rye, and wheat, may be cultivated as successfully as in Europe; and in the Middle States, wheat is raised in vast quantities and of excellent quality. Maize, and in the

southern parts, rice, are very extensively raised within the bounds of the Union.

On the table-land in southern latitudes of the Mexican Republic, the corn-plants of Europe are cultivated, but never at a lower elevation above the level of the sea than two thousand five hundred or three thousand feet. In the regions of Mexico of a lower level, maize is extensively raised; and, from the nature of the climate, and the fertility of the soil, the returns are most abundant, sometimes yielding a harvest of two hundred for one.

In the temperate and polar districts of the southern hemisphere, the order of cultivation is very similar to that pursued in corresponding latitudes and elevations north of the tropics. In the southern provinces of Brazil, in Buenos Ayres, and in Chili, as well as at the Cape of Good Hope, and among the settlers in Australia, wheat forms the principal object of cultivation. In Van Dieman's Land, barley, rye, and oats, are also to be found.

This hasty sketch may serve to show, without any remark, how beneficently the Creator has suited some one or other of the various kinds of grain to all the productive climates of the earth, and how remarkably the constitution of each is adapted to its own locality, the one class intermingling with the other at the various lines of contact, so as to leave no region of the earth without its wholesome and appropriate food. This will appear more distinctly, in treating of each species separately.

TENTH WEEK-SATURDAY.

THE CORN-PLANTS.-WHEAT.

THE nature of this work will only admit of some slight notices of the most remarkable articles of agricultural produce; and of these, I begin with wheat, as the species of grain held in highest and most general estima

tion.

The peculiar property on which the value of this plant

depends, next to the quantity of farinaceous food which the seed contains, is its extraordinary power of multiplication, increasing in proportion to the care employed in its cultivation. In vol. İviii. of the Philosophical Transactions, it is recorded, that Mr. C. Miller, of Cambridge, sowed, on the 2d of June, a few grains of common red wheat, one of the plants from which had tillered* so much, that on the 8th of August he was enabled to divide it into eighteen parts, all of which were placed separately in the ground. In the course of September and October, so many of these had again multiplied their stalks, that the number of plants which were separately set out to stand the winter, was sixty-seven. With the first growth of the spring the tillering again went forward, so that, at the end of March and beginning of April, a further division was made, and the number of plants now amounted to five hundred. Mr. Miller thought that before the season had too far advanced, another division might have been made, when the number would have been at least quadrupled. This, however, was not done; but the five hundred plants proved extremely vigorous, much more so than wheat under ordinary culture, so that the number of ears submitted to the sickle was 21,109, or more than forty to each of the divided plants. In some instances, there were not fewer than one hundred ears on one plant. The ears were remarkably fine, some being six or seven inches long, and containing from sixty to seventy grains. The wheat, when separated from the straw, weighed 47 lbs. 7 oz., and measured three pecks and three quarters, the estimated number of grains being 576,840.

Such an enormous increase is not, of course, attainable on any great scale, or by the common modes of culture. But the experiment serves to show the vast power of reproduction with which the Creator has endowed this most valuable of vegetables; and leads us to comprehend, how, by judiciously varying the mode of culture, the produce may be rendered more adequate to supply the wants of

*To tiller, technically signifies to throw out stalks, not from the germ, but from various points of the infant sprouts, while yet they remain in act with the moist soil.

a growing population; or, at all events, how, under some peculiar circumstances, such as that of a ship's crew being cast on a desert island, the possession of a single grain of wheat may, in a very few seasons, be made to contribute to the support and comfort of a considerable number of individuals.

The ordinary produce of wheat varies exceedingly, being made to depend, not merely on the quality of the soil, and the nature of the season, but on the mode of culture; a provision intended, doubtless, to stimulate and reward industrious habits. The average production of the soil, in any country, depends on the advance of its inhabitants in knowledge, and in the possession of capital. It has been conjectured, that, in the thirteenth century, an acre of good land in England would produce twelve bushels of wheat.* In two centuries, this rate of produce appears to have greatly increased. Harrison, writing in 1574, says, that on an average,† "each acre of rye or wheat, well tilled and dressed, will yield commonly sixteen or twenty bushels; an acre of barley, six-and-thirty bushels; of oats and such like, four or five quarters; which proportion is, notwithstanding, oft abated towards the north, as it is oftentimes surmounted in the south."

The

mean produce, in Great Britain, did not, according to the estimate of Mr. Arthur Young, when he wrote, (about half a century ago,) exceed twenty-two and a half bushels per acre. It is constantly on the increase, and other and later writers have calculated the average at from twentyfour to twenty-eight bushels.

At the time of the Revolution, according to the estimate of Gregory King, fourteen millions bushels of wheat were raised in England. In 1828, according to the estimate of Mr. Jacob, in his tracts on the Corn Trade, twelve millions five hundred thousand quarters, or a hundred million bushels were raised. The population of England, at the Revolution, [1688,] was under five mil

*Eden's History of the Poor, vol. i. p. 18.

+ This I understand by what he calls " meane and indifferent years,” signifying, in more modern language, medium and common years.

II.

26

VIII.

lions, so that each person consumed about three bushels annually. The population, at the present time, is under fifteen millions, so that each person consumes about seven bushels annually.

Extraordinary success in agricultural labors has sometimes been the means of exciting, not only the envy, but the superstition of a neighborhood. A case of this kind is related by Pliny, as having occurred among Romans. Cresinus, he tells us, was cited before an assembly of the people, to answer to a charge of sorcery, founded on his reaping much larger crops than others, from a small spot of ground. "In answer to this charge, Cresinus produced his efficient implements of husbandry, his well-fed oxen, and a hale young woman, his daughter, and pointing to them, he exclaimed, 'These, Romans, are my instruments of witchcraft; but I cannot here show you my labors, sweats, and anxious cares.'”’*

We have seen how wheat is multiplied by means of tillering, an operation which takes place under ground; and I cannot help mentioning a curious fact, with reference to this subject, which seems to discover a new and remarkable adaptation between the vegetable and animal world. There is an insect,† which is accustomed to deposit its eggs in the very core of the plumula, or primary shoot of wheat, so that this shoot is completely destroyed by the larva. Did the plant possess, within itself, no means of repairing this injury, the whole previous labor of the husbandman would, in this case, have been in vain. But this destruction occurring in the spring of the year, when the vegetable power of the plant is in its greatest vigor, an effect is produced, somewhat analogous to that of heading down a fruit tree. Shoots immediately spring up from the knots; the plant becomes more firmly rooted, and produces probably a dozen stems and ears, when, but for the temporary mischief, it might have sent forth one only.

There is here a most curious and beneficent deviation

* Nat. Hist., book xviii. chap. vi.

+ Musca pumilionis.