MONOCOTYLEDONS 



269 



and the crop matures in about five months. The great 

 corn-producing States in their order are Illinois, Iowa, Kan- 

 sas, Nebraska, Missouri, and Indiana; and in 1899 these 

 States produced nearly three-fifths of the entire crop of the 

 United States. 



Aside from its use as a food for man and domestic 

 animals, corn, it is said, enters into the preparation of 

 more than a hundred different articles, in which the husks, 

 the outer part of the stalk, the pith, and the cobs are used. 

 Most of the starch of the United States comes from corn, 

 and much of the whisky and the alco- 

 hol. In addition to the various races 

 of field corn, the sugar-containing sweet 

 corn, used in marketing and canning, 

 with its wrinkled grains and short grow- 

 ing period, is well known; and also the 

 small-eared and flinty pop-corn. 



While corn is not seriously injured 

 by rusts ( 84) as are the other cere- 

 als, its most common disease is smut, 

 which appears as tumor-like swellings 

 (on stalks, leaves, and ears) full of 

 spores that look like black powder. 

 Smuts are related to the rusts, and 

 their attack on corn has not been pre- 

 vented so successfully as have their 

 attacks on other cereals. 



Rice. Rice is said to form the prin- 

 cipal food of one-half the human race 

 (Fig. 266). A native of the East Indies, 

 it is cultivated now wherever the proper 

 conditions are present. It needs a sub- 

 tropical climate, and a moist soil that 

 can be flooded artificially at certain seasons. Far the 

 greatest amount of the rice of the world is produced in 



FIG. 266. Rice. 

 After WOSSIDLO. 



