16 AGRICULTURE AND RURAL-LIFE DAY. 



THE ORIGIN OF FOOD PLANTS. 



Nearly all our vegetable foods have been developed from five 

 original plants. One of these was a kind of grass, another bore its 

 weeds in pods, the ricliness of the third was in its roots, the fourth 

 surrounded its seeds with a fleshy or pulpy growth, and the fifth had 

 spreading leaves. 



The seeds of the grass were developed by cultivation till they 

 became what we now call grain. This process gave us wheat, barley, 

 Indian corn, rye, rice, millet, and buckwheat. The same grass plant 

 was cultivated in another way, so as to make its stalks luscious and 

 juicy, with the result that there finally evolved timothy, blue-grasses, 

 and other forage crops. So it is that both man and man's animals 

 are fed by descendants of the same original plant. 



But grass was cultivated in still a third way, to make its stalks 

 stiff and woodlike, and this gave us bamboo. 



From the plants which bore their seeds in pods, the farmers have 

 developed clover, alfalfa, lentils, beans, peas, and other legumes. 



The root plant gave us the onion, the beet, the turnip, carrot, 

 parsnip, and sweet potato. The white potato is not a root, but a 

 thickening of the plant's underground stem, which is called a tuber. 

 The peanut is neither a root nor a tuber, but a seed, which the plant 

 ripens underground instead of in the sunshine. 



The plant which surrounded its seeds with a fleshy covering was 

 the first parent of all the hundreds of fruits and berries which we 

 now enjoy; while the leafy plant gave us cabbage, celery, lettuce, 

 asparagus, spinach, chicory, and tea. 



THE FARMER'S VICTORY. 



In the agriculture of the future the preventive medical treatment 

 of plants will be an important factor. The country suffers a loss 

 from insect pests amounting to a billion dollars a year. These pun}' 

 invaders are costing this country more every year than the total ex- 

 penses of the United States Government, including the Army, the 

 Navy, the post oiRce, and Federal pensions. In the South there 

 are the boll weevil consuming the cotton crops, and the cattle tick 

 giving the live stock a fever from which they die ; in the West there 

 is the Hessian fly attacking the wheat; in New England the brown- 

 tail moth and the gypsy moth are ruining trees without number; 

 and everywhere there are the San Jose scale and the codling moth, 

 whose unconsidered ravages in our fruit orchards entail a greater loss 

 annually than that which was suffered by the loss of the splendid 

 Titanic with all her cargo. 



