46 AGRICULTUEE AND RURAL-LIFE DAY. 



It has been said before that all the cereals sjDrang from a kind 

 of wild grass. Wheat, therefore, is related to all the other cereals, 

 but in importance it has outclassed them all. 



"NAHieat was not grown in the new Avorld until after Columbus's 

 discovery. Maize, or Indian corn, was the chief food of the Indians. 

 It is said that a negro slave of Cortez found three or four grains 

 oif wheat in the rice which served as a food for the Spanish army. 

 These were sown and thus wheat was introduced into Mexico, The 

 first wheat sown in the United States was by Gosnold, in 1602, on 

 the Elizabeth Islands, off the southern coast of Massachusetts. It 

 was first cultivated in Virginia in 1011, and in the present State of 

 New York by 1022. 



It is easy to see that the migration of wheat has been closely con- 

 nected Avith the migration of peoples. It is the one cereal that civi- 

 lized i^eople carry with them, and wherever they make their homes 

 they quickly develop a variety that can be cidtivated. This was es- 

 pecially true before the days of the railroad and the steamboat, when 

 it was difficult to transport foods any great distance overland. 



It is not as important, commercially, in America as Indian corn 

 and does not adapt itself to new lands and changes in environment 

 so readily. Corn was the main support of the early colonists and 

 the pioneers, but wheat has followed the westward migration of 

 population, and the center of wheat production to-day is in the 

 Middle West. 



Wheat is more widely cultivated than any other cereal. It is cul- 

 tivated from the Arctic almost to the Antarctic circle and in every 

 longitude of the globe, and there is not a month in the year that some 

 nation is not harvesting it. It is interesting to observe when wheat 

 is harvested in different countries: 



January — Austria, New Zealand. Chile. 



Fehruary and March — Upper Egypt aucl India. 



ApriJ — Lower Egypt, India, Syria, Cyprus, Persia, Asia-Minor, Mexico, Cuba. 



May — Texas, Central Asia, and northern Africa. 



June — Southern and trans-Rocky Mountain States of America, Turkey, Greece, 

 Italy, Spain, Portugal. 



July — New England, Middle Atlantic and Northwestern States of America, Up- 

 per Canada, Roumania, Bulgaria, Austria, Hungary, Southern 

 Russia, Germany, Switzerland, Southern England. 



August — The far northwestern States of America, parts of Canada, Belgium, 

 Holland, Great Britain, Denmark, Poland, central Russia. 



September and October — Scotland, Norway, northern Russia. 



November — Peru, south Africa, northern Argentina. 



December — Argentina, Burmah, New South Wales. 



It will thus be seen that, since wheat is cultivated in so many dif- 

 ferent latitudes and altitudes, there must be a great number of va- 

 rieties, and this is true. 



