114 THE SEED-GROWER. 
simply been improving these antique forms, which were 
bred for cultivation ages back in a lost civilization. 
The more we contemplate the work of the ancient 
plant-breeders, the more we are lost in wonder. It is 
plain that it was not owing to results of chance, but we 
can reasonably conclude that it was due to certain sys- 
tematic methods, applied with a high order of intelli- 
gence, generally along the line of selection. 
The living evidences of their skill are these specimens 
which have come down to us, and of which Pliny gives 
testimony that they existed under cultivation at the 
beginning of the Christian era, not materially different 
in their forms from what they are to-day. 
How old are these anciently bred plants? It would 
probably be nearer right to date their origin at least to 
the time of the Sphinx, supposed to be about seven 
thousand years old or even much further back to that 
mystic golden age, when men thought out the first prin- 
ciples of arithmetic, astronomy, and the sciences gen- 
erally, and studied the art of food, and perhaps dis- 
covered the secret since lost, of being able to live to 
be one thousand years old. That, even in the time 
of Josephus the historian, there were glimmerings of, 
as when in writing the views of his period, why men 
were formerly able to live to such great age, he said: 
‘* Because their food was then fitter for the prolongation 
of life.”’ 
Before leaving this pardonable reference to prehistoric 
plant-breeding, let us direct attention to the simple hard- 
heading cabbage, and its sub-varieties, brussels sprouts, 
broccoli, cauliflower, kohl rabi and ruta baga, and in- 
quire whether any plant-breeder of our time is able to 
reproduce these in forms as we know them, from their 
progenitor, the wild cabbage, which is to be seen to-day 
