236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



we do not know, but if the plants were already monoecious before the 

 change, and such a variation occurred, it would have been likely to have 

 continued to exist in competition with the parent form on account of 

 the greater chance for perfect fertilization of the silks. 



The last step in our history is to make ancestral maize a perfect 

 flowered species ; that is, a form in which each flower has both male and 

 female organs. There is no question but that this was once the case. 

 "We know it by the characters possessed by the more ancient wild 

 grasses and by the ease with which the plant reverts to the former con- 

 dition. No one has isolated a race that breeds true to the older type, 

 but every one who has raised corn has seen hundreds of tassels contain- 

 ing little seeds. It would seem that kindly external conditions alone 

 are sufficient to bring back to the corn the memory of its old habit. 

 When moisture is plentiful and the soil fertile, one can see these freaks 

 by the hundreds in almost every field. The production of male flowers 

 or their essential parts, the stamens, on the ears is much more rare, but 

 it does occur. 



Onr history is complete. We can picture to ourselves the wild 

 promaize growing on the plateaus of Mexico and Central America 

 thousands of years ago. A towering prince of grasses it was, bearing its 

 tiny seeds on loose spikes at the ends of the branches. Conditions 

 changed. The perfect flowers separated into two kinds, bearing organs 

 of the different sexes. A type with shortened side branches appeared, 

 giving the seeds greater protection from feathered and furry enemies. 

 This was probably the grain that some wise man among the forerun- 

 ners of the Toltecs discovered and made the foundation of American 

 agriculture. From that time forth cultivation made possible the selec- 

 tion of variations that would not have survived in the wild. Variation 

 must have been plentiful, and our aboriginal corn breeders less foolish 

 in agriculture than they were in commerce, as is demonstrated by the 

 numerous varieties improved by long selection presented to the white 

 man in return for a few paltry beads of colored glass. 



