The second group, that comprising plants introduced from the Far East, includes many valuable fruit trees, which in the region of the absolutely rainless summer mostly require irrigation. The peach came from China in the time of Alexander the Great; the various citrus fruits, lemon, orange, lime, citron, etc., now so characteristic a feature, were introduced from China or India. India also gave rice, extensively cultivated during long ages, and still extensively consumed, though the facility with which communication with the East is now effected makes it relatively little grown, except in the plain of Lombardy, which is easily irrigated. China sent the white mulberry, and with it the cultivation of the silkworm, so important in many regions. From the Far East also came the sugar-cane, very important till the recent development of the sugar beet industry. Cotton also was probably introduced from the Far East, which thus supplied many cultivated plants and has enormously enriched life for Mediterranean man.
Of the American plants of late introduction the most interesting is maize, which fed the somewhat limited indigenous civilisation of North America. Maize requires a warm climate with much sunshine, but needs much moisture during its short growing season. It is not a very valuable cereal, but it is enormously productive and therefore cheap. Generally it may be said to be used as food by man only when necessity compels its use. It is thus employed by subject races, e. g. negroes, and by the poor in the warmer parts of Europe. In the Mediterranean it is not sufficiently valuable to be grown on irrigated land, and it will not grow without irrigation where the summer is rainless. Where there are summer rains, however, as in North Italy, or where mountain slopes increase the rainfall, as in parts of Greece, or where the land is rendered valueless for wheat by winter flooding, there maize is grown. Generally it occurs within the Mediterranean area wherever the necessary water occurs naturally or can be supplied cheaply. It forms a very important part of the food of the poor in North Italy, for example, but not in the south, where water is too costly.
Two other important plants of American origin are tobacco and the potato. The latter plant is little grown in the Mediterranean, but a considerable amount of tobacco is produced. Another American plant, the prickly pear, besides furnishing an edible fruit, is important as a hedge plant within the area.
Cereals in the Mediterranean are grown, as we have seen, on ploughed land, as elsewhere. A more characteristic form of cultivation is garden-culture, practised where water can be obtained for irrigation. Such gardens consist primarily of fruit trees, all the citrus fruits, peaches, apricots, pomegranates, pistachio, almonds, and many other forms of nuts, plums, even apples and pears, being grown in this way. So productive is the ground once water is supplied, that plants are grown in association in a fashion hardly suggested in the north. Thus among the fruit trees many different kinds of vegetables, such as garlic, cucumbers, leeks, salad plants, many sorts of melons, tomatoes, egg-plants, beans, and peas, etc., are grown. Elsewhere one may see corn sown beneath the olive trees, and the vine sharing the same ground with them.
The picture of Mediterranean life may be completed by adding a few words about the domesticated animals. These are naturally in essence the same as those further north, but their relative numbers and the uses to which they are put are different.
The dog and cat both occur, but the former has little importance in the pastoral industries, and is largely a watch animal, insufficiently fed, and therefore important as a sanitary agent in that it devours garbage. Among the ungulates or hoofed animals, the ass was domesticated in the region long before the horse, and it and the mule are still more important than the horse, partly, no doubt, because both are hardier, and the problem of food is a difficulty in the largely pastureless Mediterranean region.
Few camels now occur in Europe, where they have been always closely associated with Mahometans, appearing and disappearing with them.
The pasturage difficulty greatly reduces the importance of cattle, which are draught animals rather than a source of food. As draught animals cattle go back to the dawn of history, but their numbers are small and the use of either their flesh or their milk as food is insignificant. Philippson in his book on the Mediterranean gives some striking figures to illustrate the difference in numbers between the cattle of the Mediterranean countries and those of Central Europe. Spain has only 2.1 million cattle, and yet it is scarcely smaller than Germany, which has 19 millions; Switzerland has 1,340,000 head of cattle, and Greece, which is about half as large again, has only 360,000. It is to be noted, however, that the irrigated plains of North Italy now support a considerable amount of cattle, whose milk gives rise to a considerable cheese industry; but, then, the olive will not grow in North Italy, which is therefore not strictly within the Mediterranean area.
The Arabs introduced the Indian buffalo which has spread considerably, and is now found in South Italy and the Balkan peninsula. The pig has been banished from parts of the region on religious grounds, but elsewhere it chiefly thrives where oak forests grow, the acorn being an important part of its food. The really important ungulates, however, are sheep and goats, which are often very numerous, and which, apart from birds and fish, furnish the most important part of the animal food of the inhabitants. The milk furnishes cheese, which is an important element of diet, while leather, wool and hair are also important products.