[Essay and Discussion at the Chamberlain Club, Worcester, Dec. 9, 1886.] 



CORN. 



By PHrLANPER S. Sears. 



The common maize, or Indian corn, is generally believed 

 to be a native of the warmer parts of America, where it was 

 cultivated by the aborigines before the discovery of America 

 by Columbus. But the representation of the plant found 

 in an ancient Chinese book in the royal library in Paris, and 

 the alleged discovery of some grains of it in the cellars of 

 ancient houses in Athens, have led some to suppose that it 

 is a native also of the East, and has, from a very early period, 

 been cultivated there, and even that it is the corn of Script- 

 ure, although on this supposition it is not easy to account 

 for the subsequent neglect of it until after the discovery of 

 America, since which time the spread of its cultivation in 

 the Old World has taken place with a rapidity such as 

 might be expected from its great productiveness and other 

 valuable qualities. 



Columbus himself brought it to Spain about the year 

 1520. It is now in general cultivation in the south of 

 Europe, and supplies a principal part of the food of the 

 inhabitants of Asia and Africa. It is by far the most pro- 

 ductive of all the cereals, in the most favorable localities 

 yielding an increase of eight hundred for one. It succeeds 

 better in a subtropical than in a tropical climate, and being a 

 shortlived annual is cultivated where the heat of summer is 

 intense, no matter what may be the cold of winter. There 

 are few plants of which the uses are more various than the 



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