more forethought than might be expected at an early and rude
period of civilisation. Even the Australian barbarians "have a law that no
plant bearing seeds is to be dug up after it has flowered;" and Sir G.
Grey[530] never saw this law, evidently framed for the preservation of the
plant, violated. We see the same spirit in the superstitious belief of the
Fuegians, that killing water-fowl whilst very young will be followed by
"much rain, snow, blow much."[531] I may add, as showing forethought in the
lowest barbarians, that the Fuegians when they find a stranded whale bury
large portions in the sand, and during the often-recurrent famines travel
from great distances for the remnants of the half-putrid mass.

It has often been remarked[532] that we do not owe a single useful plant to
Australia or the Cape of Good Hope,--countries abounding to an unparalleled
degree with endemic species,--or to New Zealand, or to America south of the
Plata; and, according to some authors, not to America northward of Mexico.
I do not believe that any edible or valuable plant, except the {311}
canary-grass, has been derived from an oceanic or uninhabited island. If
nearly all our useful plants, natives of Europe, Asia, and South America,
had originally existed in their present condition, the complete absence of
similarly useful plants in the great countries just named would indeed be a
surprising fact. But if these plants have been so greatly modified and
improved by culture as no longer closely to resemble any natural species,
we can understand why the above-named countries have given us no useful
plants, for they were either inhabited by men who did not cultivate the
ground at all, as in Australia and the Cape of Good Hope, or who cultivated
it very imperfectly, as in some parts of America. These countries do yield
plants which are useful to savage man; and Dr. Hooker[533] enumerates no
less than 107 such species in Australia alone; but these plants have not
been improved, and consequently cannot compete with those which have been
cultivated and improved during thousands of years in the civilised world.

The case of New Zealand, to which fine island we as yet owe no widely
cultivated plant, may seem opposed to this view; for, when first
discovered, the natives cultivated several plants; but all inquirers
believe, in accordance with the traditions of the natives, that the early
Polynesian colonists brought with them seeds and roots, as well a