tuberous rooted
plants and the trees yielding farina, are very widely diffused, and
necessarily occupy the main attention of the cultivator; their
products forming the most important staples of domestic and foreign
commerce. The cereal grasses and roots, cultivated in temperate
regions, such as wheat, barley, oats, rye, and the potato, are so well
known, and have been so fully described by agricultural writers that I
shall not go much into details as to their varieties, culture, &c.,
but confine myself chiefly to their distribution, produce, statistics,
and commercial importance. The food plants may be most conveniently
arranged under three heads. Firstly--the Grain crops and legumes,
which comprises the European cultivated grasses, wheat, barley, oats,
&c.; and the tropical ones of rice, maize, millet, Guinea corn, &c.
Secondly--Palms and other trees yielding farina, including the sago
palms, plantain and banana, and the bread fruit tree. And Thirdly--the
edible Root crops and Starch producing plants, which are a somewhat
extensive class, the chief of which, however, are the common potato,
yams, cocos or eddoes, sweet potatoes, the bitter and sweet cassava or
manioc, the arrowroot and other plants yielding starch in more or less
purity.

There is a great diversity of food, from the humble oak bark bread of
the Norwegian peasant, or the Brahmin, whose appetite is satisfied
with vegetables, to the luxurious diet of a Hungarian Magnate at
Vienna.

The bread stuffs, as they are popularly termed, particularly wheat and
wheat flour, maize, and rice, form very important articles of
commerce, and enter largely into cultivation in various countries for
home consumption and export. Russia, India, and the United States,
carry on a very considerable trade in grain with other countries. Our
local production being insufficient for food and manufactures, we
import yearly immense quantities of grain and flour. In the four years
ending 1852, the annual quantity of corn, of various, kinds, imported
into the United Kingdom, exclusive of flour and meal, rice, sago, &c.,
averaged 8,085,903 quarters.

The flour and meal imported, omitting sago, arrowroot and other
starches, averaged in the same period 4,143,603 cwts. annually.

The annual imports of breadstuffs for food, taking the average of the
four years ending with 1852, may be thus summed up--

Tons.
Corn and gra