, indeed, know the properties of a long catalogue of plants, some
having {308} been found during famines to be eatable, others injurious to
health, or even destructive to life. He met a party of Baquanas who, having
been expelled by the conquering Zulus, had lived for years on any roots or
leaves which afforded some little nutriment, and distended their stomachs,
so as to relieve the pangs of hunger. They looked like walking skeletons,
and suffered fearfully from constipation. Sir Andrew Smith also informs me
that on such occasions the natives observe as a guide for themselves, what
the wild animals, especially baboons and monkeys, eat.

From innumerable experiments made through dire necessity by the savages of
every land, with the results handed down by tradition, the nutritious,
stimulating, and medicinal properties of the most unpromising plants were
probably first discovered. It appears, for instance, at first an
inexplicable fact that untutored man, in three distant quarters of the
world, should have discovered amongst a host of native plants that the
leaves of the tea-plant and mattee, and the berries of the coffee, all
included a stimulating and nutritious essence, now known to be chemically
the same. We can also see that savages suffering from severe constipation
would naturally observe whether any of the roots which they devoured acted
as aperients. We probably owe our knowledge of the uses of almost all
plants to man having originally existed in a barbarous state, and having
been often compelled by severe want to try as food almost everything which
he could chew and swallow.

From what we know of the habits of savages in many quarters of the world,
there is no reason to suppose that our cereal plants originally existed in
their present state so valuable to man. Let us look to one continent alone,
namely, Africa: Barth[524] states that the slaves over a large part of the
central region regularly collect the seeds of a wild grass, the _Pennisetum
distichum_; in another district he saw women collecting the seeds of a Poa
by swinging a sort of basket through the rich meadow-land. Near Tete
Livingstone observed the natives collecting the seeds {309} of a wild
grass; and farther south, as Andersson informs me, the natives largely use
the seeds of a grass of about the size of canary-seed, which they boil in
water. They eat also the roots of certain reeds, and every one has read of
the Bushmen prowling about and diggin