File:The history of mankind (1896) (14763933445).jpg

Identifier: historyofmankind01ratz (find matches)
Title: The history of mankind
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology
Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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food products must not be judgedfrom the fact that no single in-digenous plant has become anobject of agriculture. We do notyet know all its articles of food, but some of them are things of which we shouldnever have believed it possible to make use. Of vegetable food-stuffs, Greyadduces for South Australia alone twenty-one different roots, dioscorecc, orchids,ferns, a typJia^ and others ; four kinds of gum or resin, seven fungi, several fruits ;among them a sago palm, and lastly the flowers of the Banksia with abundanceof honey. In the north the list is larger, being materially enriched by others ;sago palm, cabbage palm, the shoots of the mangrove, which are pounded, fer-mented, and eaten mixed with an indigenous bean, the grain-bearing marsiliacece,the roots of nympfaza, and several fruits. The North-west Australians know howto deprive the sago fruit and the orchid bulbs of their poison. It is true that theroot of the so-called Australian yam is small, and the eucalyptus gum has not
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.1 (a is ilia Dru m mondii PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTER OF THE AUSTRALIANS 337 much nourishment ; and we must also admit that Australia is remarkably poor inthe plants which take away something of their natural poverty from other steppecountries, such as the various species of cucumber, gourd, and melon, and thevarious bulbous plants. But the fact that the Australians of themselves neverreached the agricultural stage, depends not so much upon their flora as upon thedegree of their civilization. So again, the fauna of Australia has not produced asingle domestic or useful animal. Those who know, declare that the mammalswhich would be first in demand are too wild ; the dingo, which is the onlyAustralian mammal accessible to taming, was in all probability imported tame,and afterwards ran wild. But with the poverty of vegetation, the fauna whichwill live in a wild state is poorly represented here. Significant also is the rarityof fish and other eatable aquatic animals caused by the defici

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