9 
CORN. 
BY JAMES BUCKMAN, F.G.S., F.L.S., F.S.A., ETC., PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY 
AMD BOTANY IN THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 
T HE notion entertained by the ancients, that corn was the 
gift of the beneficent goddess Ceres, may not impro- 
perly be held to express the fact that they knew little, if any- 
thing, of its natural origin, and that with them the need of 
reflection was obviated by attributing the possession of corn to 
a special divine interposition. 
The honour paid by the Romans to the “ bountiful goddess” 
may be gathered from the care which they evinced in depicting 
her form and attributes. 
The representation of Ceres, on a tessellated pavement, dis- 
covered at Cirencester ( Corinium of the Romans), gives no bad 
notion of the dignified treatment of which tins kind of subject 
was susceptible, when, even with potsherds and bits of different 
coloured stones, the artist, aided as he must have been by pro- 
found veneration and deep religious feeling, produced a design 
of so much grandeur as to elicit from Mr. Westmacott, the Royal 
Academician, the observation : “ These interesting specimens 
satisfy me, as an artist, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that 
such works were produced after examples of the very highest 
reach of art.”* 
But, however much the ancients may have venerated Ceres 
for her gift of wheat, &c., the care with which every natural 
object has been studied in our day has conduced to the conclu- 
sion that the so-called Cereals, in all the varieties employed by 
man for different purposes, were not created in the forms they 
now assume, but that they have been derived by cultivation from 
wild plants very different indeed from the civilized types with 
which we arc at present acquainted under the collective name 
of Corn. 
In England, wheat, rye, barley, and oats, are spoken of as 
corn; in the United States the Zea Mays (maize or Indian 
corn) enjoys that title solely ; whilst different sorts of grain are 
mentioned under their specific names. 
The scientific agriculturist, recognizing corn-plants as be- 
longing to the natural order Graviinacece (in other words, as 
* This opinion was founded on a study of the figures of Ceres, Flora, and 
Pomona. 
