This tuber seemed like a faint promise of
Nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at some
future period. In these days of fatted cattle and waving
grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian
tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but
let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious
English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and
without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed
of corn to the great cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest,
whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost
exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of
frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient
importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian
Ceres or Minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it; and
when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string of
nuts may be represented on our works of art.
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