CHAPTER I 



THE EARLIEST DISCOVERIES REGARDING SEX IN PLANTS 



1. Early Experiments in Plant Breeding. 



A FULL discussion of the history of the views, opinions, and 

 discoveries regarding sex in plants is reserved for a later 

 publication. On this account, therefore, the present ref- 

 erences to the subject will be necessarily brief. 



Exactly where or when man first began to practise the cultiva- 

 tion of plants and to bring them into domestication is not known. 

 It is certain however, that one of the earliest homes of civilized 

 man was in the lower basin of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers 

 in southwestern Asia, today known as Iraq, the site of the tradi- 

 tional "Garden of Eden." 



From four to six thousand years before the present era, and at 

 least fifteen hundred years before the days of the Jewish patri- 

 arch Abraham, this region was occupied by an already ancient, 

 orderly and settled people, possessing both cultivated plants and 

 domestic animals. Indeed, there is little reason to doubt that the 

 low alluvial plain fed by the "waters of Babylon" was the scene 

 of one of the first of civilized man's attempts at the improvement 

 of plants, for it is known that the cultivation of the date palm 

 was being carried on in this region during the very earliest times. 



2. Date Culture in Ancient Babylonia and Assyria. 



The history of the date palm typifies better than that of almost 

 any other plant, man's relation to the plant world as a moulder 

 of its cultivated forms. 



The fact of the culture of dates in Mesopotamia in ancient 

 times is demonstrated by Babylonian and Assyrian monuments, 

 and was recorded by several of the early Greek historians ; the 

 monuments show not only the fact of the culture of the date, but 

 even plainly represent the process of hand-pollination. 



