INDIAN CUPID 



hybridizing and selection.^ By crossing certain kinds of 

 corn, such as the Chinese Oat and the wild European Oat, 

 varieties have been produced by Messrs. Garton which at the 

 Highland and Agricultural Society's trials produced 84, 87, 

 and 99 bushels per acre, as compared with 58 bushels yielded 

 by the ordinary Scotch Oat.^ With potatoes also astonish- 

 ing results have been got. 



One single potato was sold for £50 not very long ago. 



The Potato, like the Indian corn, tobacco, and a few other 

 plants, is an inhabitant of the New World. Of other 

 cultivated plants the native country is not known. No one 

 knows where, for instance. Sugar-cane was first cultivated, 

 but it has nine Sanskrit names, one of which, khand^ is, or 

 has probably at one time been familiar to us as sugar-candy. 

 It was well-known when the Institutes of Manu were written, 

 but that may have been somewhere between 2000 b.c. and 

 A.D. 20. 



One of the Hindu Indian deities, Kdmadeva, who corre- 

 sponds to Cupid, the God of Love, carries a bow made of 

 sugar-cane, with a string which is composed of bees. 



'^ He bends the luscious cane and twists the string 

 With bees : how sweet ! but ah ! how keen their sting, 

 He with five flowerets tips the ruthless darts 

 Which through five senses pierce enraptured hearts." 



From India it seems to have been carried by Alexander 

 the Great to Asia Minor, for it is mentioned by Herodotus. 

 In the time of the Crusades it was discovered in Syria, and 

 the Venetians learned something about it when the Crusaders 

 returned to Europe. The Spaniards introduced the Sugar- 

 cane to the Canary Islands in 1470. Then the Dutch took 



1 Masters, Nature, July, 1899. 

 ■^ Journal Farmers' Club, February, 1900. 

 279 



