s best suited to it when artificially increased.
Palestine has been conjectured, by a late writer on the cerealia, to
have been the original habitation of wheat and barley; a supposition
which is rendered the more plausible by Hebrew and Egyptian traditions,
and by tracing the migrations of the worship of Ceres, as indicative of
the migrations of the plant.[811]

If we are to infer that some one of the wild grasses has been
transformed into the common wheat, and that some animal of the genus
_Canis_, still unreclaimed, has been metamorphosed into the dog, merely
because we cannot find the domestic dog, or the cultivated wheat, in a
state of nature, we may be next called upon to make similar admissions
in regard to the camel; for it seems very doubtful whether any race of
this species of quadruped is now wild.

_Changes in plants produced by cultivation._--But if agriculture, it
will be said, does not supply examples of extraordinary changes of form
and organization, the horticulturist can, at least, appeal to facts
which may confound the preceding train of reasoning. The crab has been
transformed into the apple; the sloe into the plum; flowers have changed
their color, and become double; and these new characters can be
perpetuated by seed; a bitter plant, with wavy sea-green leaves, has
been taken from the sea-side, where it grew like wild charlock; has been
transplanted into the garden, lost its saltness, and has been
metamorphosed into two distinct vegetables, as unlike each other as is
each to the parent plant--the red cabbage and the cauliflower. These,
and a multitude of analogous facts, are undoubtedly among the wonders of
nature, and attest more strongly, perhaps, the extent to which species
may be modified, than any examples derived from the animal kingdom. But
in these cases we find that we soon reach certain limits, beyond which
we are unable to cause the individuals descending from the same stock to
vary; while, on the other hand, it is easy to show that these
extraordinary varieties could seldom arise, and could never be
perpetuated in a wild state for many generations, under any imaginable
combination of accidents. They may be regarded as extreme cases,
brought about by human interference, and not as phenomena which indicate
a capability of indefinite modification in the natural world.

The propagation of a plant by buds or grafts, and by cuttings, is
obviously a mode which nature does not employ; and thi