what territory that tree is indigenous: that will
certainly be the place. As thus; I will work out for you a
suggestion given in the encyclopaedia, that you may see what
strictly scientific methods of reasoning may lead to:--

Perhaps the two plant names most universally met with in all
Aryan languages, European or Asiatic, are _potato_ and _tobacco._
'From Greenland's icy mountains to Ceylon's sunny isle, Whereever
prospect pleases, And only man is vile.'--you shall nearly always
hear the vile ones calling the humble tuber of their mid-day
meal by some term akin to _potato,_ and the subtle weed that
companions their meditations, by some word like _tobacco._
_Argal,_ the Aryan race used these two words before their
separation; and if the two words, the two plants also. You
follow the reasoning?--Now then, seek out the land where these
plants are indigenous; and if haply it shall be found they both
have one original habitat, why, there beyond doubt you shall find
the native seat of the primitive Aryans. And, glory be to
Science! they do; both come from Virginia. Virginia, then, is
the Aryan Garden of Eden.

Ah but, strangely enough, we do find one great branch of the
race--the Teutons--unacquainted with the word _potato._ You may
argue that the French are too: but luckily, Science has the
seeing eye; Science is not to be cheated by appearances. The
French say _pomme de terre;_ but this is evidently only a
corruption--_potater, pomdeter_--twisted at some late period by
false analogy into _pomme de terre,_ ('apple of the earth'.) But
the Teuton has _kartoffel,_ utterly different; argal again, the
Teutons must have separated from the parent stem before the
Aryans had discovered that the thing was edible and worth naming.
They, therefore, were the first to leave Virginia: paddle their
own canoes off to far-away Deutschland before ever the mild
Hindoo set out for Hindustan, the Greek for Greece, or the
Anglo-Saxon for Anglo-Saxony. But even the Teutons have the word
_tobacco._ Come now, what a light we have here thrown on the
primitive civilization of our forefathers! They knew, it seems,
the virtures of the weed or ever they had boiled or fried a single
murphy; they smoked first, and only ate long afterwards: and
the Germans who led that first expedition out from the fatherland
of the race, must have gone with full tobacco-pouches and empty
lunch-bags. What a life-like picture rises before our eyes!
These