THE ANTIQUITY OF MAIZE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 78, 28 September 1907, Page 19

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAIZE.

Maize was the great bread. plant of both North and South America for a couple of thousand years or moro before Columbus ciossed the Atlantic. It is within the past half century that scientific leaders of United States agriculture have multiplied aud improved its varieties, but still the monuments of Mcs.co, Now Mexico, and Peru, believed to be quito two thousand years old, havo been found to contain 'mtny kinds of corn. , It is proved, too, that those early peoples had made great progress in the uses of their staple; they boiled and roasted it when groan, and when ripe ground it in their slow mills for flour. To tho first European colonists the "Ilidiata corn** proved Ealvatiozi both for themselve 3 and their Atork. They quickly picked up its valuo from the Indians, and the Jame3 River settlers, after commencing its cultivation in 1608, had three years later thirty acres of it. The Indians appear to havo had boko sound ideas of cropping, and those on tho soabdard' followed Lho practice of manuring their cleaieJ patchcß with fish. Tnis method of assisting tho coil was quickly adopted by the whites, and in tho chronicles of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Mass., it is set out, that in 1621:— ."According to tho manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with heiringa, or rather ehnds, whiJi wo have in great abundance, and take with ease at our doois You may ecu in one township a hundred acres set >vilh theco fish, every aero carrj-ing a thousand of them mhl an aero thus dressed will -produce and yield as muoh corn as throo acrc-a without fish." With wonderful rapidity mnizs spread over Europo and Asia, whero it waa quickly known by such local .names an Italian corn, Roman wheat, Turkish corn, Indian wheat, Sicilian wheat, Barbary wheat, Spanish wheat, Guinea, and Egyptian wheat In fact, it became co much at home thero that many disputes hayo arieen as to its real country of origin. Sinco the American experimentalists began in earnest to improvo maipe tha advanco in yield and quality has been extraordinary. An authority describes 507 distinct VRrieticß and 266 synonyms. Tho naino comes from Mahus, which tho natives called the plnnt at Hayxi, where Columbus first saw it