BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



and so tractable that no one had the patience to spend time 

 and effort in domesticating the former. In South America 

 the llama and alpaca are used locally but do not seem to 

 have much value for other parts of the world. The only 

 animals to be taken back to Europe and used were the 

 guinea pig from the southern continent and the turkey 

 from the north — and neither of these is important. Our 

 plants have been more useful. Maize, originating in Central 

 America, is now grown in Southern Europe and in parts of 

 Asia, Africa, and Australia. 



The original home of maize was wrongly identified 

 because the names under which it was first grown in Europe 

 indicated an eastern origin. The word maize (mays) is 

 American, as it comes from the Mayan tribe in Central 

 America, but this name was not used at first. In English, 

 the term Indian corn suggests India as its home. In French, 

 ble de Turquie, or Turkish wheat, indicates Asia Minor as its 

 birthplace. But since maize is not wheat, one may also sup- 

 pose it is not Turkish. Many plants are thus wrongly 

 named. English walnuts did not originate in England, nor 

 are they extensively grown there. Oriental persimmons are 

 called date plums, although they are not related to dates, 

 nor are they plums. The Jerusalem artichoke shows how 

 misleading a name can be. The edible part of this plant is 

 the root and not the blossom bud of the true artichoke. 

 Nor did it come from Jerusalem; it is, in fact, the only 

 cultivated plant native to the temperate region of North 

 America. Its name seems to be merely a corruption of the 

 Italian girasole meaning sunflower. As one botanist puts 

 it, "we thus see how much worse a double name is, since 

 if it be single only one mistake is possible." 



The names which have been given to corn in Europe 

 simply indicate a foreign origin. Maize was called Roman 

 corn in Central Europe, Sicilian corn in Italy, and Turkish 

 corn in Sicily. The Turks called it Egyptian corn, while 



[326] 



