32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



1. Maize {Zea niais), our Indian corn, seems to have been the 

 most -widely diffused and most important of all the kinds of vegetable 

 food employed by the native population. In all parts of North and 

 South America, where the climate was favorable, the whites found 

 corn cultivated by the aborigines, and in the tombs of Peru as well 

 as in the mounds of the mound-builders, ears of corn have been dis- 

 covered, which prove that it was an important element of subsistence 

 as far back as human records extend. Even the nomadic Indians who 

 inhabited the forest-covered region between the Mississippi and Atlan- 

 tic had their corn-fields and their patches of beans and squashes, and 

 succotash (the Indian name) was the dish most esteemed in their cui- 

 sine, and is almost the only one which has been adopted by the whites. 



In the region west of the Mississippi only a limited district is 

 adapted to the cultivation of maize. It is a plant which finishes its 

 growth and ripens its seed within three or four months, and it there- 

 fore matures within the tropical summer which prevails even to the 

 northern boundary of the United States. But it requires both warmth 

 and moisture ; hence in the di-y regions of the Far West it can only be 

 cultivated in few localities, and there attains but imperfect develop- 

 ment. In California, where so many fruits, flowers, and grains reach 

 unequaled perfection, the cultivation of corn is rarely successful. 

 Even where irrigation supplies the necessary moisture and the mid- 

 day sun is hotter than in any Eastern State, the cloudless sky permits 

 such rapid radiation that the nights are always cool, often cold, and 

 the warm, moist nights of midsummer in the Mississippi Valley, when 

 the corn may be heard to grow, never occur. On the table-lands of 

 Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico corn is quite extensively cultivated, 

 but under difliculties, and never with what we should call success. 

 The plant is always small, the grain light in texture and usually of 

 some fancy color, and it is not uncommon to see the bread or cakes 

 baked from it of a positive blue. Among the Moquis of Northeastern 

 Arizona, where the plains that are cultivated are sandy, the seed-corn 

 is dropped to the bottom of holes twelve to fifteen inches deep, made 

 with a stick. Though dry at the surface, the sand is moist below, 

 having absorbed all the water furnished by the snows of winter, and 

 the cloudless sun warms the soil so that the grains germinate even at 

 that depth. When the growing plant rises above the surface of the 

 ground it immediately shoots out its ears, and the field when the crops 

 mature looks as though it had been inundated and sand deposited 

 around the stems to half their height. The color of the grain is usu- 

 ally blue, and the bread made from it and baked between two flat, 

 smooth stones by the Moquis, though well flavored, looks like blue 

 wrapping-paper. 



2. Beans {Phaacolus imlr/aris). It has been demonstrated that one 

 or several kinds of beans were generally cultivated in America at the 

 time of the discovery by Columbus. The " Lima-bean " was certainly 



