35 
From the standpoint of human development, the history of 
the starch plants is simply that of the development of the great 
crop plants of agriculture and most of these were essentially what 
they are now before the appearance of written records. The 
bulkiness of starch crops made them largely in early times 
roducts for local consumption. The sugars, because of their 
attractive tastes, concentrated form and more localized pro- 
duction, early became objects of traffic between widely separated 
peoples and they have played a much more conspicuous réle 
in the development of commerce and manufacture. Doubtless 
one of the very earliest manufacturing processes was the conden- 
sation of plant juices into syrups and crude sugars, antedated 
only by the primitive processes of milling by which the starches 
of the cereal grains were made more available for food. Cane 
sugar was originally brought from India and its use there as 
syrupy extracts of cane plainly antedates the earliest epee 
records. Indian sugar was first brought to Europe in the time 
of Alexander and it was one of the stimuli to the oe eee of 
commercial intercourse between east and west. Cane growing 
was introduced into the Mediterranean islands and countries by 
the Arabs in the seventh century. The crusades spread the use 
of sugar more widely in western Europe and the increasing 
demand for it was one of the stimuli to the discovery of the sea 
route to the East Indies. Columbus introduced sugar cane in 
San Domingo on his second voyage. The West Indies afforded a 
more favorable soil and climate for it than had before been found 
and within the first century after the discovery of the New World 
sugar became one of the most important and highly prized 
exports. The development of the sugar beet industry in France 
and Germany as a result of the Napoleonic blockade which cut 
off Europe from her source of supplies in America is the latest of 
the long series of revolutions in world commerce and manufacture 
in which sugar played a prominent part. The history of sugar 
prices from the middle of the thirteenth century to the present 
shows a reduction from something like $2.00 a pound to the 
current value of a few cents per poun 
We depend for our most Goncentiaied foods on the excess 
