LXXXIV 
WHERE DID CORN COME FROM? 
I SN’T IT ODD that the scientists, with all their 
knowledge of plant families and origins, have not 
been able to find out whence came corn, the greatest of 
crops! 
There is no wild corn in all the world. There is no 
kindred grass with corn-like traits which would seem a 
possible ancestor from which it might have developed. 
Corn when left to itself, even under the most favorable 
conditions, will not survive. Its seeds have no way of 
distributing themselves. They have no wings like the 
thistledown, on which they can fly away. They stick to 
the tail of no animal, as does the cockleburr, that they 
may be carried far from the parent bush. They hold on 
to their cob which, even if it got itself buried, would send 
up a clump of plants which would strangle one another. 
Unaided corn cannot thrive; it seems to have no place 
in nature. It can live only with man’s help. 
Corn was not known to the Eastern Hemisphere before 
the time of Columbus. It was found under cultivation 
when the white man first came to America. The Indians 
raised it in their fields. The Aztecs and the Incas, farther 
south, cultivated it extensively. But they knew no kin¬ 
dred plant from which it might have come. They did 
not know where they got it. Perhaps the Aztecs inherited 
corn from a people who had preceded them, and perhaps 
these in turn had inherited it from yet another race. So 
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