spirit of man. First, in their nobleness: the lilies gave the lily of
the Annunciation; the asphodels, the flower of the Elysian fields;
the irids, the fleur-de-lys of chivalry; and the amaryllids, Christ’s
lily of the field; while the rush, trodden always underfoot, became
the emblem of humility. Then take each of the tribes, and consider
the extent of their lower influence. Perdita’s, “The crown imperial,
lilies of all kinds,” are the first tribe; which giving the type of
perfect purity in the Madonna’s lily, have, by their lovely form,
influenced the entire decorative design of Italian sacred art; while
ornament of war was continually enriched by the curves of the triple
petals of the Florentine “giglio” and French fleur-de-lys; so that it
is impossible to count their influence for good in the Middle Ages,
partly as a symbol of womanly character and partly of the utmost
brightness and refinement of chivalry in the city which was the
flower of cities.
Afterward the group of the turban-lilies, or tulips, did some
mischief (their special stains having made them the favorite caprice
of florists); but they may be pardoned all such guilt for the
pleasure they have given in cottage-gardens, and are yet to give,
when lowly life may again be possible among us; and the crimson bars
of the tulips in their trim beds, with their likeness in crimson bars
of morning above them, and its dew glittering heavy, globed in their
glossy cups, may be loved better than the gray nettles of the ash
heap, under gray sky, unveined by vermilion or by gold.
The next great group of the asphodels divides itself also into two
principal families: one, in which the flowers are like stars, and
clustered characteristically in balls, though opening sometimes into
looser heads; and the other, in which the flowers are in long bells,
opening suddenly at the lips, and clustered in spires on a long stem,
or drooping from it when bent by their weight.
The star group of the squills, garlics, and onions has always
caused me great wonder. I can not understand why its beauty and
serviceableness should have been associated with the rank scent which
has been really among the most powerful means of degrading peasant
life, and separating it from that of the higher classes.
The belled group of the hyacinth and convallaria is as delicate as
the other is coarse; the unspeakable azure light along the ground of
the wood hyacinth in English spring; the grape hyacinth, which is in
south France, as if a cluster of grapes and a hive of honey had been
distilled and compressed together into one small boss of celled and
beaded blue; the lilies of the valley everywhere, in each sweet and
wild recess of rocky land--count the influences of these on childish
and innocent life; then measure the mythic power of the hyacinth and
asphodel as connected with Greek thoughts of immortality; finally
take their useful and nourishing power in ancient and modern peasant
life, and it will be strange if you do not feel what fixed relation
exists between the agency of the creating spirit in these and in us
who live by them.
It is impossible to bring into any tenable compass for our present
purpose even hints of the human influence of the amaryllids and
irids--only note this generally, that while these in northern
countries share with the Primulas the fields of spring, it seems that
in Greece the Primulaceæ are not an extended tribe, while the crocus,
narcissus, and Amaryllis lutea, the “lily of the field” (I suspect
also that the flower whose name we translate “violet” was in truth
an iris), represented to the Greek the first coming of the breath
of life on the renewed herbage; and became in his thoughts the true
embroidery of the saffron robe of Athena. Later in the year, the
dianthus (which, though belonging to an entirely different race of
plants, has yet a strange look of having been made out of the grasses
by turning the sheath-membrane at the root of their leaves into a
flower) seems to scatter, in multitudinous families, its crimson
stars far and wide. But the golden lily and crocus, together with the
asphodel, retain always the old Greek’s fondest thoughts--they are
only “golden” flowers that are to burn on the trees and float on the
streams of paradise.
I have but one tribe of plants more to note at our country feast--the
savory herbs; but must go a little out of my way to come at them
rightly. All flowers whose petals are fastened together, and most of
those whose petals are loose, are best thought of first as a kind of
cup or tube opening at the mouth. Sometimes the opening is gradual,
as in the convolvulus or campanula; oftener there is a distinct
change of direction between the tube and expanding lip, as in the
primrose; or even a contraction under the lip, making the tube into a
narrow-necked phial or vase, as in the heaths, but the general idea
of a tube expanding into a quatrefoil, cinquefoil, or sixfoil, will
embrace most of the forms.
Now it is easy to conceive that flowers of this kind, growing in
close clusters, may, in process of time, have extended their outside
petals rather than the interior ones (as the outer flowers of the
clusters of many umbellifers actually do), and thus elongated and
variously distorted forms have established themselves; then if the
stalk is attached to the side instead of the base of the tube, its
base becomes a spur, and thus all the grotesque forms of the mints,
violets, and larkspurs gradually might be composed. But, however this
may be, there is one great tribe of plants separate from the rest,
and of which the influence seems shed upon the rest in different
degrees: and these would give the impression not so much of having
been developed by change as of being stamped with a character of
their own, more or less serpentine or dragon-like. And I think
you will find it convenient to call these generally Draconidæ;
disregarding their present ugly botanical name, which I do not care
even to write once--you may take for their principal types the
foxglove, snap-dragon, and calceolaria; and you will find they all
agree in a tendency to decorate themselves by spots, and with bosses
or swollen places in their leaves, as if they had been touched by
poison. The spot of the foxglove is especially strange, because it
draws the color out of the tissue all round it, as if it had been
stung, and as if the central color was really an inflamed spot with
paleness round. Then also they carry to its extreme the decoration
by bulging or pouting the petal; often beautifully used by other
flowers in a minor degree, like the beating out of bosses in hollow
silver, as in the kalmia, beating out apparently in each petal by the
stamens instead of a hammer; or the borage, pouting inward; but the
snap-dragons and calceolarias carry it to its extreme.
Then the spirit of these Draconidæ seems to pass more or less into
other flowers, whose forms are properly pure vases; but it affects
some of them slightly, others not at all. It never strongly affects
the heaths; never once the roses; but it enters like an evil spirit
into the buttercup, and turns it into a larkspur, with a black,
spotted, grotesque centre, and a strange, broken blue, gorgeous and
intense; yet impure, glittering on the surface as if it were strewn
with broken glass, and stained or darkened irregularly into red. And
then at last the serpent-charm changes the ranunculus into monkshood,
and makes it poisonous. It enters into the forget-me-not, and the
star of heavenly turquoise is corrupted into the viper’s bugloss,
darkened with the same strange red as the larkspur, and fretted into
a fringe of thorn; it enters, together with a strange insect-spirit,
into the asphodels, and (though with a greater interval between the
groups), they change into spotted orchideæ; it touches the poppy,
it becomes a fumaria; the iris, and it pouts into a gladiolus; the
lily, and it checkers itself into a snake’s head, and secretes in the
deep of its bell drops not of venom indeed, but honey-dew, as if it
were a healing serpent. For there is an Æsculapian as well as an evil
serpentry among the Draconidæ, and the fairest of them, “erba della
Madonna” of Venice (Linaria Cymbalaria), descends from the ruins
it delights in to the herbage at their feet, and touches it; and
behold, instantly, a vast group of herbs for healing--all draconid
in form--spotted and crested, and from their lip-like corollas
named “labitæ”; full of various balm and warm strength for healing,
yet all of them without splendid honor or perfect beauty, “ground
ivies,” richest when crushed under the foot; the best sweetness and
gentle brightness of the robes of the field--thyme, and marjoram, and
euphrasy.
And observe, again and again, with respect to all these divisions
and powers of plants; it does not matter in the least by what
concurrences of circumstance or necessity they may gradually have
been developed: the concurrence of circumstance is itself the supreme
and inexplicable fact. We always come at last to a formative cause
which directs the circumstance and mode of meeting it. If you ask
an ordinary botanist the reason of the form of a leaf, he will tell
you it is a “developed tubercle,” and that its ultimate form “is
owing to the directions of its vascular threads.” But what directs
its vascular threads? “They are seeking for something they want,”
he will probably answer. What made them want that? What made them
seek for it thus? Seek for it, in five fibres or in three? Seek for
it, in serration, or in sweeping curves? Seek for it, in servile
tendrils, or impetuous spray? Seek for it, in woolen wrinkles rough
with stings, or in glossy surfaces, green with pure strength, and
winterless delight?
There is no answer. But the sum of all is, that over the entire
surface of the earth and its waters, as influenced by the power of
the air under solar light, there is developed a series of changing
forms, in clouds, plants, and animals, all of which have reference
in their action, or nature, to the human intelligence that perceives
them; and on which, in their aspects of horror and beauty, and their
qualities of good and evil, there is engraved a series of myths, or
words of the forming power, which, according to the true passion
and energy of the human race, they have been enabled to read into
religion.
PROGRESS OF CULTIVATION
--ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE
In spite of the obscurity of the beginnings of cultivation in
each region, it is certain that they occurred at very different
periods. One of the most ancient examples of cultivated plants is
in a drawing representing figs, found in Egypt in the pyramid of
Gizeh. The epoch of the construction of this monument is uncertain.
Authors have assigned a date varying between fifteen hundred and
four thousand two hundred years before the Christian era. Supposing
it to be two thousand years, its actual age would be four thousand
years. Now, the construction of the pyramids could only have been
the work of a numerous, organized people, possessing a certain
degree of civilization, and consequently an established agriculture,
dating from some centuries back at least. In China, two thousand
seven hundred years before Christ, the Emperor Chenming instituted
the ceremony at which every year five species of useful plants are
sown--rice, sweet potato, wheat, and two kinds of millet. These
plants must have been cultivated for some time in certain localities
before they attracted the emperor’s attention to such a degree.
Agriculture appears then to be as ancient in China as in Egypt. The
constant relations between Egypt and Mesopotamia lead us to suppose
that an almost contemporaneous cultivation existed in the valleys of
the Euphrates and the Nile. And it may have been equally early in
India and in the Malay Archipelago. The history of the Dravidian and
Malay peoples does not reach far back, and is sufficiently obscure,
but there is no reason to believe that cultivation has not been known
among them for a very long time, particularly along the banks of the
rivers.
[Illustration: Common Cereals and Food Plants
1, Lentil; 2, Flax; 3, Barley; 4, Millet; 5, Rye]
The ancient Egyptians and the Phœnicians propagated many plants
in the region of the Mediterranean, and the Aryan nations, whose
migrations toward Europe began about 2500, or at least 2000 years B.
C., carried with them several species already cultivated in Western
Asia. We shall see, in studying the history of several species,
that some plants were probably cultivated in Europe and in the north
of Africa prior to the Aryan migration. This is shown by names in
languages more ancient than the Aryan tongues; for instance, Finn,
Basque, Berber, and the speech of the Guanchos of the Canary Isles.
However, the remains called kitchen-middens, of ancient Danish
dwellings, have hitherto furnished no proof of cultivation or any
indication of the possession of metal. The Scandinavians of that
period lived principally by fishing and hunting, and perhaps eked
out their subsistence by indigenous plants, such as the cabbage,
the nature of which does not admit any remnant of traces in the
dung-heaps and rubbish, and which, moreover, did not require
cultivation. The absence of metals does not in these northern
countries argue a greater antiquity than the age of Pericles, or
even the palmy days of the Roman Republic. Later, when bronze was
known in Sweden--a region far removed from the then civilized
countries--agriculture had at length been introduced. Among the
remains of that epoch was found a carving of a cart drawn by two oxen
and driven by a man.
The ancient inhabitants of Eastern Switzerland, at a time when they
possessed instruments of polished stone and no metals, cultivated
several plants, of which some were of Asiatic origin. Heer has shown
in his admirable work on the lake-dwellings that the inhabitants had
intercourse with the countries south of the Alps. They may also have
received plants cultivated by the Ibernians, who occupied Gaul before
the Kelts. At the period when the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and
Savoy possessed bronze, their agriculture was more varied. It seems
that the lake-dwellers of Italy, when in possession of this metal,
cultivated fewer species than those of Savoy, and this may be due
either to a greater antiquity, or to local circumstances. The remains
of the lake-dwellers of Laybach and of the Mondsee in Austria prove
likewise a completely primitive agriculture; no cereals have been
found at Laybach, and but a single grain of wheat at the Mondsee.
The backward condition of agriculture in this eastern part of Europe
is contrary to the hypothesis, based on a few words used by ancient
historians, that the Aryans sojourned first in the region of the
Danube, and that Thrace was civilized before Greece. In spite of this
example, agriculture seems in general to have been more ancient in
the temperate parts of Europe than we should be inclined to believe
from the Greeks, who were disposed, like certain modern writers, to
attribute the origin of all progress to their own nation.
In America, agriculture is perhaps not quite so ancient as in Asia
and Egypt, if we are to judge from the civilization of Mexico and
Peru, which does not date even from the first centuries of the
Christian era. However, the widespread cultivation of certain plants,
such as maize, tobacco, and the sweet potato, argues a considerable
antiquity, perhaps two thousand years or thereabout. History is at
fault in this matter, and we can only hope to be enlightened by the
discoveries of archæology and geology.
The greater number of ancient historians have confused the fact of
a cultivation of a species in a country with that of its previous
existence there in a wild state. It has been commonly asserted, even
in our own day, that a species cultivated in America or China is a
native of America or China. A no less common error is the belief
that a species comes originally from a given country because it has
come to us from thence, and not direct from the place in which it is
really indigenous. Thus the Greeks and Romans called the peach the
Persian apple, because they had seen it cultivated in Persia, where
it probably did not grow wild. It was a native of China. They called
the pomegranate, which had spread gradually from garden to garden
from Persia to Mauritania, the apple of Carthage (Malum Punicum).
Very ancient authors, such as Herodotus and Berosus, are yet more
liable to error, in spite of their desire to be accurate.
Agriculture came originally, at least so far as the principal species
are concerned, from three great regions, in which certain plants
grew, regions which had no communication with each other. These are:
China, the southwest of Asia (with Egypt), and intertropical America.
I do not mean to say that in Europe, in Africa, and elsewhere savage
tribes may not have cultivated a few species locally, at an early
epoch, as an addition to the resources of hunting and fishing; but
the greater civilizations based upon agriculture began in the three
regions I have indicated. It is worthy of note that in the Old World
agricultural communities established themselves along the banks of
the rivers, whereas in America they dwelt on the highlands of Mexico
and Peru. This may perhaps have been due to the original situation
of the plants suitable for cultivation, for the banks of the
Mississippi, of the Amazon, of the Orinoco, are not more unhealthy
than those of the rivers of the Old World. A few words about each of
the three regions. China had already possessed for some thousands
of years a flourishing agriculture and even horticulture, when she
entered for the first time into relations with Western Asia, by the
mission of Chang-Kien, during the reign of the Emperor Wu-ti, in
the second century before the Christian era. The records known as
Pent-sao, written in our Middle Ages, state that he brought back the
bean, the cucumber, the lucern, the saffron, the sesame, the walnut,
the pea, the spinach, the watermelon, and other western plants,
then unknown to the Chinese. Chang-Kien, it will be observed, was
no ordinary ambassador. He considerably enlarged the geographical
knowledge and improved the economic condition of his countrymen.
It is true that he was constrained to dwell ten years in the west,
and that he belonged to an already civilized people, one of whose
emperors had, 2700 B. C., consecrated with imposing ceremonies the
cultivation of certain plants. The Mongolians were too barbarous,
and came from too cold a country, to have been able to introduce
many useful species into China; but when we consider the origin
of the peach and the apricot, we shall see that these plants were
brought into China from Western Asia, probably by isolated travelers,
merchants or others, who passed north of the Himalayas. A few species
spread in the same way into China from the west before the embassy
of Chang-Kien.
Regular communication between China and India only began in the time
of Chang-Kien, and by the circuitous way of Bactriana; but gradual
transmissions from place to place may have been effected through
the Malay Peninsula and Cochin-China. The writers of northern China
may have been ignorant of them, and especially since the southern
provinces were only united to the empire in the second century before
Christ.
Regular communications between China and Japan only took place about
the year 57 of our era, when an ambassador was sent; and the Chinese
had no real knowledge of their eastern neighbors until the Third
Century, when the Chinese character was introduced into Japan.
The vast region which stretches from the Ganges to Armenia and the
Nile was not in ancient times so isolated as China. Its inhabitants
exchanged cultivated plants with great facility, and even transported
them to a distance. It is enough to remember that ancient migrations
and conquests continually intermixed the Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic
peoples between the great Caspian Sea, Mesopotamia and the Nile.
Great states were formed nearly at the same time on the banks of
the Euphrates and in Egypt, but they succeeded to tribes which had
already cultivated certain plants. Agriculture is older in that
region than Babylon and the first Egyptian dynasties, which date
from more than four thousand years ago. The Assyrian and Egyptian
empires afterward fought for supremacy, and in their struggles they
transported whole nations, which could not fail to spread cultivated
species. On the other hand, the Aryan tribes who dwelt originally to
the north of Mesopotamia, in a land less favorable to agriculture,
spread westward and southward, driving out or subjugating the
Turanian and Dravidian nations. Their speech, and those which are
derived from it in Europe and Hindostan, show that they knew and
transported several useful species. After these ancient events, of
which the dates are for the most part uncertain, the voyages of the
Phœnicians, the wars between the Greeks and Persians, Alexander’s
expedition into India, and finally the Roman rule, completed the
spread of cultivation in the interior of Western Asia, and even
introduced it into Europe and the north of Africa, wherever the
climate permitted.
Later, at the time of the Crusades, very few useful plants yet
remained to be brought from the East. A few varieties of fruit trees
which the Romans did not possess, and some ornamental plants, were,
however, then brought to Europe.
The discovery of America in 1492 was the last great event which
caused the diffusion of cultivated plants into all countries. The
American species, such as the potato, maize, the prickly pear,
tobacco, etc., were first imported into Europe and Asia. Then a
number of species from the Old World were introduced into America.
The voyage of Magellan (1520-1521) was the first direct communication
between South America and Asia. In the same century, the slave
trade multiplied communications between Africa and America. Lastly,
the discovery of the Pacific Islands in the Eighteenth Century, and
the growing facility of the means of communication, combined with a
general idea of improvement, produced that more general dispersion of
useful plants of which we are witnesses at the present day.
VEGETABLE MIMICRY AND HOMOMORPHISM
--ALEXANDER S. WILSON
Besides the family likeness and similarity of structure
characteristic of closely allied organisms, other resemblances
included under the terms Mimicry and Homomorphism, are observed among
living things which can not be referred to a common ancestry since
they are presented by plants and animals whose affinities are more
or less remote. If the resemblance confers any benefit on either
species it is spoken of as a case of mimicry, but if it results from
the operation of general laws and is not directly advantageous, the
likeness is described as homomorphic. It is not always possible to
draw a sharp line between the two, and homomorphism not improbably
represents one stage in the development of mimetic species.
The vital phenomena of plants and animals are so near akin that it
would be strange if we did not meet with corresponding facts in the
vegetable kingdom. Mimicry is perhaps more frequent in the seed than
in any other part of vegetable organism; it occurs, however, in
other organs, and even the entire plant body may assume a deceptive
appearance. A well-known example is the white dead-nettle, which so
closely resembles the stinging nettle in size and in the shape and
arrangement of its leaves. In systematic position the two plants are
widely removed from each other, but they grow in similar situations
and are easily mistaken; any one who has occasion to collect any
quantities of Lamium is almost sure to get his hands stung by
Urtica, an experience calculated to convince one of the efficacy of
protective resemblance. Among animals it is species provided with
formidable weapons of defence that are most frequently mimicked by
weak defenceless creatures. The stinging nettle is therefore a very
likely model for unprotected plants to copy.