56 THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE 



When people learned to raise and care for fruits 

 and grains they themselves began to change from 

 savages into more civilized beings. For when they 

 had planted grain they must stay and tend it and 

 wait for it to become ripe and fit to eat. So they 

 gradually ceased their roving life, ceased spending 

 their entire time hunting game and began to live 

 together in groups. So civilized life began with 

 gardens and grain fields. 



Have you ever seen a field of tall, Indian corn, 

 with the tassels nodding above the thick green 

 mass? Have you ever seen a field of golden wheat 

 ready to be harvested, or a field of barley or oats? 

 The ripe oats might make you think of long stalks 

 of ripened grass, and for a good reason. All our 

 grain, such as corn, wheat, rye, oats, barley and 

 rice, were wild grass long, long ago before men 

 planted them and took care of them. 



Does it seem possible that ''just grass" could 

 ever have been cultivated to such an extent that its 

 seeds would become the source of our daily bread? 

 But it is true. For a longer time than you could 

 count, or even think, men have been cultivating these 

 cereals, and they have improved them so much that 

 now we can hardly believe that they were once a 

 kind of wild grass. ''The grass of the field," Jesus 

 called these grains. 



God's care of the world and of us is bestowed in 

 such a wonderful way that the very conomonest 

 part of the earth's covering, the grass, is not only the 

 food for cattle and horses and sheep, but it is also 

 the principal source of our own food. But grass had 



