[Animals and Plants, vol. i, page 322.] I shall not enter into so much detail on the variability of cultivated plants as in the case of domesticated animals. The subject is involved in much difficulty. Botanists have generally neglected cultivated varieties, as beneath their notice. In several cases the wild prototype is unknown or doubtfully known; and in other cases it is hardly possible to distinguish between escaped seedlings and truly wild plants, so that there is no safe standard of comparison by which to judge of any supposed amount of change. Not a few botanists believe that several of our anciently cultivated plants have become so profoundly modified that it is not possible now to recognize their aboriginal parent-forms. Equally perplexing are the doubts whether some of them are descended from one species, or from several inextricably commingled by crossing and variation. Variations often pass into, and can not be distinguished from, monstrosities; and monstrosities are of little significance for our purpose. Many varieties are propagated solely by grafts, buds, layers, bulbs, etc., and frequently it is not known how far their peculiarities can be transmitted by seminal generation. * * * * * [Page 325.] From innumerable experiments made through dire necessity by the savages of every land, with the results handed down by tradition, the nutritious, stimulating, and medicinal properties of the most unpromising plants were probably first discovered. It appears, for instance, at first an inexplicable fact that untutored man, in three distant quarters of the world, should have discovered, among a host of native plants, that the leaves of the tea-plant and mattee, and the berries of the coffee, all included a stimulating and nutritious essence, now known to be chemically the same. We can also see that savages suffering from severe constipation would naturally observe whether any of the roots which they devoured acted as aperients. We probably owe our knowledge of the uses of almost all plants to man having originally existed in a barbarous state, and having been often compelled by severe want to try as food almost everything which he could chew and swallow. SAVAGE WISDOM IN THE CULTIVATION OF PLANTS. [Page 326.]