Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/706

688, the plum, the apricot, the peach, the cherry, etc. In extending their domination from one extremity of the ancient world to the other, the Arabs still found something to glean, and the Crusaders took numerous loans from them. Europe then acquired rice, sugar cane, and the orange. Finally, since the great expeditions of the Renaissance, the flora of the entire world has been put under contribution. The Romans caused trees loaded with fruit to figure in their triumphs, in testimony, Pliny says, of a victory which had been gained over Nature not less than over men. Thus, wherever civilization established itself it sought, in order to make itself welcome and its presence a blessing, to lavish upon the new lands the gains which it had accumulated in its former cultivations. Like the gods of other days, when they descended among men, it appeared with its hands full of precious gifts. This propagation of useful plants is of itself so great a benefit that it compensates, and more, for all the evil that civilization has been accused of spreading.

During the course of the subjection of the vegetable world to our use, the conquest has followed an order upon which the documents of the past do not always cast a sufficient light, but of which it is possible to restore the stages by means of a logical induction, while bearing in mind the urgency of the needs, the difficulties of cultivation, and the complexity of the uses. The first plants which man interested himself in propagating were those which would assure his subsistence, for the demands of hunger are the most imperious. Then came economical and medicinal plants. The industrial species usually belong to a later stage. Ornamental and fanciful species were a late gain and the luxury of an already rich civilization.

in his book, The Face of the Earth, and Neumayr, accepting the Chaldean story of the flood as the original version of the Mosaic account, held that it was a local event in the plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, and that view has prevailed extensively. Richard Hennig, however, discussing the subject in the German Weekly Magazine of Science, argues in favor of the independent origins of the flood stories found among so many peoples, and associates it with some of the striking phenomena of the Ice age which indicate a general increase of rainfall and lowering of temperature during the Quaternary period. Isolated lands—Egypt, for instance—far from these influences, remained free from interruption. The accounts in the German Saga would apply well as descriptions of such a period.

the people of Montenegro, Mr. W. H. Cozens-Hardy says that every man, even the poorest, has the bearing and dignity of a gentleman. Education is universal and compulsory on all children over seven. Theft is unknown, and drunkenness unheard of. Women are universally respected; a woman goes in safety where no man dares.