Thomson. 
Corn. 
(ABUNDANCE.) 
“ How good the God of harvest is to you, 
Who pours abundance o’er your flowing fields.” 
ORN, which is the generic name applied to all kinds of 
grain suitable for food, is found in nearly every portion 
of the glebe, and yet botanists assure us that it is nowhere to 
be found in its primitive state, or that any of the various plants 
which, under the term of cerealia, are comprehended in this 
precious family, will flourish without culture. 
Corn, more particularly wheat, is the most valuable of all 
natural productions ; and the country whose soil bears plen¬ 
teous crops of this in-every-way appropriate symbol of abun¬ 
dance, can afford to disregard the pretensions of all rival nations 
which found their claims to wealth merely upon the strength 
of their mineral riches. 
Ceres was the Goddess of Corn, as indeed her name signifies. 
’She was usually represented as a beautiful woman, crowned 
with ears of corn, a wheatsheaf at her side, and the Cornucopia, 
or horn of plenty, in her hand. In commemoration of the 
abJuction of her daughter Proserpine by Pluto, a festival was 
annually held about the beginning of harvest, and another 
celebration in remembrance of the search for her at the time 
of sowing the corn. During the search of Ceres for her 
daughter, the earth was left quite uncultivated; but on her 
return she gave instructions to her favourite, Triptolemus, how 
to cultivate the ground and superintend corn and harvests. 
Ovid thus describes the affair in his “Metamorphoses 
“ She halts at Athens, dropping like a star. 
And to Triptolemus resigns her car. 
Parent of seed, she gave him fruitful grain, 
And bade him teach to till and plough the main; 
The seed to sow, as well in fallow fields, 
As where the soil manured a richer harvest yields.” 
