Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/58

42 tuberosum. Pumpkins—Cucurbita pepo. Cymlings—Cucurbita verrucosa. Squashes—Cucurbita melopepo.

There is an infinitude of other plants and flowers, for an enumeration and scientific description of which I must refer to the Flora Virginica of our great botanist, Dr. Clayton, published by Gronovius at Leyden, in 1762. This accurate observer was a native and resident of this State, passed a long life in exploring and describing its plants, and is supposed to have enlarged the botanical catalogue as much as almost any man who has lived.

Besides these plants, which are native, our farms produce wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, and broom corn. The climate suits rice well enough wherever the lands do. Tobacco, hemp, flax, and cotton, are staple commodities. Indico yields two cuttings. The silk worm is a native, and the mulberry, proper for its food, grows kindly.

We cultivate also potatoes, both the long and the round, turnips, carrots, parsneps, pumpkins, and ground nuts, (Arachis.) Our grasses are Lucerne, St. Foin, Burnet, Timothy, ray, and orchard grass; red, white, and yellow clover; greensward, blue grass, and crab grass.

The gardens yield musk melons, water melons, tomatoes, ochre, pomegranates, figs, and the esculent plants of Europe.

The orchards produce apples, pears, cherries, quinces, peaches, nectarines, apricots, almonds, and plums.

Our quadrupeds have been mostly described by Linnæus and Mons. de Buffon. Of these the mammoth, or big buffalo, as called by the Indians, must certainly have been the largest. Their tradition is, that he was carnivorous, and still exists in the Northern parts of America. A delegation of warriors from the Delaware tribe having visited the Governor of Virginia, during the present revolution, on matters of business, after these had been discussed and settled in council, the Governor asked them some questions relative to their country, and, among others, what they knew or had heard of the animal whose bones were found at the Saltlicks, on the Ohio.