t be identified with their wild
prototypes. But on this view, considering that savages probably would not
have chosen rare plants for cultivation, that useful plants are generally
conspicuous, and that they could not have been the inhabitants of deserts
or of remote and recently discovered islands, it appears strange to me that
so many of our cultivated plants should be still unknown or only doubtfully
known in the wild state. If, on the other hand, many of these plants have
been profoundly modified by culture, the difficulty disappears. Their {307}
extermination during the progress of civilisation would likewise remove the
difficulty; but M. De Candolle has shown that this probably has seldom
occurred. As soon as a plant became cultivated in any country, the
half-civilised inhabitants would no longer have need to search the whole
surface of the land for it, and thus lead to its extirpation; and even if
this did occur during a famine, dormant seeds would be left in the ground.
In tropical countries the wild luxuriance of nature, as was long ago
remarked by Humboldt, overpowers the feeble efforts of man. In anciently
civilised temperate countries, where the whole face of the land has been
greatly changed, it can hardly be doubted that some plants have been
exterminated; nevertheless De Candolle has shown that all the plants
historically known to have been first cultivated in Europe still exist here
in the wild state.

MM. Loiseleur-Deslongchamps [522] and De Candolle have remarked that our
cultivated plants, more especially the cereals, must originally have
existed in nearly their present state; for otherwise they would not have
been noticed and valued as objects of food. But these authors apparently
have not considered the many accounts given by travellers of the wretched
food collected by savages. I have read an account of the savages of
Australia cooking, during a dearth, many vegetables in various ways, in the
hopes of rendering them innocuous and more nutritious. Dr. Hooker found the
half-starved inhabitants of a village in Sikhim suffering greatly from
having eaten arum-roots,[523] which they had pounded and left for several
days to ferment, so as partially to destroy their poisonous nature; and he
adds that they cooked and ate many other deleterious plants. Sir Andrew
Smith informs me that in South Africa a large number of fruits and
succulent leaves, and especially roots, are used in times of scarcity. The
natives