for want of picking while you buy laboriously raised spinach — neither as 
fresh nor as cheap as these “weed” greens. The origin and world-wide 
distribution of our common vegetables is a history of famines, of explora- 
tion, of changing tastes, of dire necessity, and awakened curiosity. It is a 
history of a few men battling against a people’s age-long habits and 
prejudices in order that these people might live better. It takes fifty years 
to introduce a new vegetable into India, writes one authority. And it is 
the worst thing we are up against — this prejudice against new things — 
remarks one of our own agricultural officials. But to return to our sub- 
ject — the vegetables we usually style American are largely gifts or heir- 
looms from the ancient Indian civilizations of Peru and Mexico — relics 
of the long vanquished empires of the Aztecs and the Incas. 
Corn, for example, is supposed ancestrally to have arisen somewhere 
in the plateau region of southern Mexico or of northern South America. 
When the white race first came in contact with it, the Indians had dis- 
tributed it far and wide over both continents of the New World — from 
Argentina to southern Canada, from ocean to ocean. Vast fields of this 
grain were traversed by the Spaniards in their pioneer marches and 
explorations in what are now the states of Florida, Alabama and Missis- 
sippi. Even those Norsemen which history vaguely affirms, landed in this 
country about 1002 A. D., were said to have seen a wicker or log crib 
for corn. Columbus, writing in 1498 to his patron king and queen, speaks 
of passing through 18 miles of cornfields. Over 7,000,000 bushels were 
bought annually for the Mexican palace of the Aztec rulers. A French 
military expedition against the Seneca Indians in 1685, spent ten days 
burning what was computed to be 1,200,000 bushels of corn. As to varie- 
ties, they were as varied in texture, size of grain and ear, time of maturity 
and as kaleidoscopic in color as they are to-day. No “wizard” white man 
can claim credit for “creating” sweet sorn, flint corn, pop corn, dent corn 
and the various other types — for these were known and cultivated by the 
Indians long before his coming. In fact the first sweet corn raised by 
the white man was obtained from the Susquehanna Indians in 1779 and 
grown around Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1854 there were only a few' 
varieties known, perhaps not more than two. The hundred or more 
varieties obtained since then have largely resulted from either accidental 
or artificial hybridization or crossing with pop and field corn. The proper 
name of corn is maize, derived from the Haytian Indian word “Mahiz” 
applied to the same plant. Corn is an old world term for grain, especially 
wheat, and brings confusion when applied to maize. Wild maize is un- 
known and many botanists suppose it resulted from chance hybridization 
between a closely related plant called teosinte and some other unknown 
grass. Others are inclined to look upon pod maize as either the wild 
plant or somewhat similar to it. In many European countries ears of 
maize are so little known as to be objects of great curiosity. Likewise, 
popcorn, until very recently, w'as very rarely seen in Germany. 
Wild potatoes of a large number of species are common in many 
parts of the Andean and Mexican plateaus as well as in the fog-embowered 
islands of the Chilean Archipelago. One wild variety flourishes as far 
north as southern Colorado, but this form has not contributed anything 
