It has been mentioned that a large proportion--probably not less than one-half--of the cereal food consumed in the States consists of maize and buckwheat. Mr Johnston always alludes to this fact, as if the use of these grains were a matter of compulsion--as if the Americans resorted to them from being unable to afford wheaten bread. Now, according to the information we have from other sources, the truth is just the reverse of this. We are told that in the Eastern and Central States, as well as on the West frontier and among the slave population, the various preparations of Indian corn are becoming more relished every year; and that the extension of its cultivation is to be attributed, not to the failure of the wheat crops, but to a growing preference for it as an article of food. In a less degree the use both of oats and buckwheat seems to be spreading in the States, as well as in our own colonies of New Brunswick and Canada East; and one can scarcely wonder at the taste for the latter grain, after reading the appetising descriptions our author gives of the crisp hot cakes, with their savoury adjuncts of maple-honey, which so often formed his breakfast during his wanderings. The general use of these three kinds of grain--maize, oats, and buckwheat--has somehow come to be considered by political economists as indicative of a low degree of social advancement. And yet we know that, in the countries suited to their growth, a given area of ground cultivated with any of them will return a greater quantity of nutritious food, at a smaller expense and with less risk of failure, than if it were cropped with wheat. We are told that the great objection to them is, that their culture _is too easy_. Professor Johnston touches upon this notion in some remarks he makes on the disadvantage of buckwheat as a staple article of food. The objections to it, he tells us, consist in the ease with which it can be raised, the rapidity of its growth, and the small quantity of seed it requires: it induces, he says, like the potato, an indolent, slovenly, and exhausting culture; and "it is the prelude of evil, when a kind of food that requires little exertion to obtain it becomes the staple support of a people."[5] It may be noticed in passing, that, in point of fact, the results alleged are at least not universal; for, in regard to this very grain, we find its cultivation prevalent in some of the best-managed districts of the hard-working, provident, and intelligent Belgians. But taking the axiom as it stands, we cannot help suspecting that there is some fallacy lurking at the bottom of it. Misled by what we have observed of the Irishman and his potato diet, we have confounded the _cum hoc_ with the _propter hoc_, and come to regard an easily-raised food as _the cause_ of that indolence of which it is only the frequent indication. It were otherwise a most inexplicable contrariety between the physical and the moral laws