MILLETS AS DROUTH CROPS 71 



they did wheat. Spillman says there are four great 

 families of millets, three of which are in common use 

 and have been used as food for man, the most common 

 being the so-called German millets, Hungarian grass 

 and the like. These grasses belong to the botanical 

 species Chaetochloa italica. The second group com- 

 prises the broomcorn millets. 'Millions of men live 

 on the seeds of these millets, while our ancestors cer- 

 tainly in Europe ate the German millets, as we find their 

 seeds in the old lake dwellings and kitchen middings 

 of Europe. The third group comprises the Japanese 

 millets cultivated extensively in parts of Japan and China 

 as food for man and beast. The fourth is Pearl millet 

 (Pennisetum spicatum). 



Millets Dry Weather Crops. The millets seem nearly 

 all of them to be adapted to conditions of relative scarcity 

 of rainfall. In the United States Spillman has shown 

 that millets (German millet, Hungarian grass and their 

 relatives) are mostly grown in Kansas, Nebraska, both 

 Dakotas, northwest Missouri, somewhat in Iowa, north- 

 ern Illinois, and on the black soils of Texas. Millet 

 comes in where timothy is uncertain and forage is needed. 

 As it is sown in the spring the land can have good cul- 

 ture to aid it in holding its moisture during hot, dry 

 weather following. It is also a quick-growing crop 

 that may be sown as late as June, perhaps on land de- 

 voted previously to some crop that failed. It is often 

 called in as a help when one sees a hay famine im- 

 pending, and in this use there is good. For a compre- 

 hensive account of the millets I direct the reader to 

 Spillman's "Farm Grasses of the United States," and 



