As storehouses of food the cereal and the vegetable are, for the greater
part, the work of man. The fundamental species, a poor resource in their
original state, we borrowed as they were from the natural treasury of
the vegetable world; the perfected race, rich in alimentary materials,
is the result of our art.
If wheat, peas, and all the rest are indispensable to us, our care, by a
just return, is absolutely necessary to them. Such as our needs have
made them, incapable of resistance in the bitter struggle for survival,
these vegetables, left to themselves without culture, would rapidly
disappear, despite the numerical abundance of their seeds, as the
foolish sheep would disappear were there no more sheep-folds.
They are our work, but not always our exclusive property. Wherever food
is amassed, the consumers collect from the four corners of the sky; they
invite themselves to the feast of abundance, and the richer the food the
greater their numbers. Man, who alone is capable of inducing agrarian
abundance, is by that very fact the giver of an immense banquet at which
legions of feasters take their place.
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