With Milk and Sugar Blest 195 



remembers the ways of the Ozark bluff-dwellers, and the 

 harvest customs of the men who raised the earth mounds in 

 the valley of the Ohio. It recalls the Green Corn Thanksgiv- 

 ings of the Iroquois. Jamestown is there; and Plymouth. And 

 farmers whose names are gone even from the sagging stones 

 in country graveyards. They fertilized an ear of one variety of 

 corn with the pollen from a different variety, and produced a 

 new line. 



But that tiny germ holds more than the past. The future is 

 there, as well. Somewhere within that tiny womb, though in- 

 visible to the keenest microscope, there are roots with power 

 to drive three feet into the earth. There is a stalk round and 

 jointed and glossy green which can spring twenty feet into 

 the air. There are crisp leaves to flutter like pennons in the 

 wind. There is a proud, pale yellow tassel. And on that tassel 

 eighteen million grains of pollen, each and every one of which 

 has power to fertilize the virgin ears. 



A million, million bushels of corn stored in that infinitesimal 

 fleck of vegetable matter! 



The corn germ is destiny. But even destiny has to be sus- 

 tained. Round and about the germ, keeping it warm and safe, 

 and ready to its use when the time comes, is a store of food. 

 This is the endosperm, which fills all the rest of the kernel 

 inside the hull. 



If you plant this kernel of corn in the earth before cutting 

 it, of course what happens is just this: the warmth and 

 moisture of the soil soften the hull. At the same time the 

 moisture, seeping into the germ through the tiny hole at the 

 base of the kernel, awakens the dormant life within it. The 

 germ begins to grow. Immediately its need for food on which 

 to grow is telegraphed to the endosperm, and the supply of 

 protein and carbohydrates stored there are made available to 

 the embryo. Presently, a pale, fragile rootlet stretches out from 

 the base of the kernel, and fastens into the earth. Then another 

 comes. Then another. Meanwhile the top of the hull cracks, 

 and an inquiring leaf sprout emerges, and starts to work its 



