See CHE EE A ge graf) a Sc EA La ee eee 
4894.] Archeology and Ethnology. 971 
ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY: 
Indian Corn in Italy.—Some Italian Naturalists like Bonafous 
(Hist. Nat. Agric. et Economique du Mais, Paris and Turin, 1836) 
have supposed that Indian Corn (Zea Mays) had grown in Asia or 
Africa before the Spaniards found it in America, but De Candolle 
(L'Origine delle piante Coltivate, Milan 1883, p. 519) believes that it 
came into the Old World from the New after the discovery by Colum- 
bus, and that Rifaud, who in 1819 found maize in an Egyptian tomb at 
‘Thebes, was deceived by an Arab. 
Signor Goiran, of Verona, supposes that the plant was first largely 
cultivated near Verona about 1647, and Signor Anelli, the inventor of 
* Anellis maize-bread," informs me that it was not used for human food 
in the Milanese until about 1817. Harschberger in his recent import- 
ant investigation of the history of the grain (Zea Mays—A Botanical 
Study, Philadelphia, 1892) while tracing the source of the American 
grain to Southern Mexico does not believe in its extra American origin, 
but whether we may suppose it to have grown in any corner of the 
Old World before 1492 or not, there is no question that the Spanish 
discoverers brought specimens of it from America to where it was noticed 
in cultivation near Seville about 1527. How it got into Italy from 
Spain, (granted that it came thence) whether directly, or by the round- 
about way of Arab commerce through Morocco, Africa and the Levant, 
no one seems to have informed us, though if by the latter route, we may 
guess that it found its way into Lombardy through Venice. 
However and whenever it appeared on the Lombard plain, the well pre- 
served architectural decorations, frescoes, paintings and book illumina- 
tions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy might throw an 
unexpected light upon the date and direction ofits first importation. The 
frescoes of Mantegna (1451—1517) often adorned with borders of plants 
and flowers might reveal maize. There is no maize, lam informed, 
among the plants and fruits painted on the leaf margins ofthe magni- 
fieent 15th eentury Missal known as the Breviario Grimani by Hans 
Memling (died before 1499) at the library in Venice; and I failed to find 
signs of the use of Indian Corn in the farmyard pictures of Jacopo 
Bassano (1510-1592) at Venice and Verona, or in the throng of stoop- 
ing figures and animals by him known as “ The Fair " at Bassano, where 
' This department is edited by H. C. Mercer, University of Pennsylvania. 
