File:The romance of plant life, interesting descriptions of the strange and curious in the plant world (1907) (14596131678).jpg

Identifier: romanceofplantli1907elli (find matches)
Title: The romance of plant life, interesting descriptions of the strange and curious in the plant world
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Elliot, George Francis Scott
Subjects: Plants
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

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t on which, however, it is quiteimpossible to come to a definite decision, may be noticedhere. We will suppose what is quite as likely as any othertheory, viz. that man as a gardening creature first settledsomewhere in the Euphrates or Caucasian valleys. What wild plants, then, would have been available for hisexperiments ? This particular region is an interesting and remarkableone. Most of our common British plants occur along theshore of the Black Sea to the Caucasus (apple, pear, nut,turnip, cabbage, carrot, and others, are all probably to befoimd there). On the Babylonian side of the mountains,there is a warm sub-tropical climate in which almost everyuseful plant can be grown. The desert also contains a fewother valuable plants. Near Ararat, Noah might have found rye, wheat, and barley growing wild. The Wild Vine also grows on the south of the Caucasus. It grows there with the luxuriant wild- ness of a tropical creeper, clinging to tall trees and produc- * Hackel, True Qrasses.272
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Stereo Cofyright, Cnderivo.hi &- Undtruood London &■ Xew York RiCEFIELDS IN THE CeYLON HiLLS The buffaloes are puddling up tha soil before the seed is planted. I THE FIRST HARVEST ing abundant fruit without pruning or cultivation.^ In thatfavoured district, the olive and the fig, the melon andcucumber, onions, garlic, and shallots, and other commongarden and medicinal plants, can be found. Not far away isthe native country of the camel, the ass, the horse, and mostother domestic animals. Were these hillsides of Ararat or thereabouts, the firstplace where man sowed and reaped a harvest ? At any rate, in those flat, fertile, alluvial plains of theEuphrates, and also in Egypt, the first great cities arose. But even in the later Stone Age, which may have beenabout 58,000 b.c, some of these Caucasian plants seem tohave been in cultivation in Switzerland. Probably everysubsequent invasion, first that of races with bronze weapons,and then of others in the Iron Age, brought with it

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