DEBT OF AGRICULTURE TO AMERICA COOK 497 



of domesticated plants specially adapted to the local conditions in 

 America which were often very different from the conditions that 

 the colonists had known in Europe. Tlie survival of the early 

 colonists often depended acutely upon their readiness of adjustment 

 to the new conditions, b}^ learning how to use and grow the new crops. 



Changes in food habits are notoriously difficult to make, as they 

 generally are resisted by an immense and unconscious inertia. 

 Under the compulsion of starvation the Pilgrim Fathers learned to 

 use " Indian corn " in Massachusetts, but the French still insist that 

 they would starve before eating it. That maize in various forms is 

 relished and preferred to other grains by millions of Europeans who 

 have settled in America would not induce the French to try it, even 

 in wartime. Out of consideration for our allies, we were enjoined 

 to eat maize and send wheat to France. We ate the maize and the 

 French lost their chance of learning about it. 



Our own use of maize as human food still is more limited than it 

 might be, and probably more limited than it should be. On account 

 of their better keeping qualities, " flint corn " and other hard-texture 

 maize varieties are preferred in the United States for feeding ani- 

 mals, while for human consumption the soft " starch-corn " varieties 

 are preferred. Many acceptable uses of maize current in the Tropics 

 are not known in the United States. A native community in eastern 

 Guatemala was supplied with hard maize from the United States in 

 a famine season, but the imported grain made inferior tortillas and 

 proved unwholesome. 



VALUABLE COTTONS FROM MEXICO 



The Upland cotton of the United States is identified in many text- 

 books with an Asiatic species, Gossypium herhaceum^ which in 

 reality is not cultivated in America. An early reference is found 

 to seed coming from the Levant, but from the plant characters it is 

 certain that the varieties now grown commercially in the United 

 States are not related to Gossyyium herhaceum. Many Asiatic cot- 

 tons have been planted experimentally in the United States and 

 found to be much less productive than Upland varieties brought 

 from tropical America. 



The westward extension of cotton culture in the United States was 

 facilitated by a new type of Upland cotton that appeared in Texas 

 near the middle of the last century and probably came from Mexico, 

 although no contemporary record of that fact has yet been found. 

 Several varieties are recognized, as Mebane, Lone Star, and Rowden, 

 which are known collectively as Texas Big-Boll cottons. In view 

 of the rapid and continued increase of production in Texas and adja- 

 cent States, it may be estimated that the Texas Big-Boll cottons 



