it was devastated, with fire and hail, until not a leaf was left of its luxuriant vegetation and the ground was bare as a threshing floor.  But the roots of the sugar cane are not destroyed though the stalk be cut down; so when men ventured to enter the desert where once had been this garden of Eden, they found the cane had grown up again and they carried away cuttings of it and cultivated it in their gardens.  Thus it happened that the nectar of the gods descended first to monarchs and their favorites, then was spread among the people and carried abroad to other lands until now any child with a penny in his hand may buy of the best of it.  So it has been with many things.  So may it be with all things.

X

WHAT COMES FROM CORN

The discovery of America dowered mankind with a world of new flora.  The early explorers in their haste to gather up gold paid little attention to the more valuable products of field and forest, but in the course of centuries their usefulness has become universally recognized.  The potato and tomato, which Europe at first considered as unfit for food or even as poisonous, have now become indispensable among all classes.  New World drugs like quinine and cocaine have been adopted into every pharmacopeia.  Cocoa is proving a rival of tea and coffee, and even the banana has made its appearance in European markets.  Tobacco and chicle occupy the nostrils and jaws of a large part of the human race.  Maize and rubber are become the common property of mankind, but still may be called American.  The United States alone raises four-fifths of the corn and uses three-fourths of the caoutchouc of the world.

All flesh is grass.  This may be taken in a dietary as well as a metaphorical sense.  The graminaceae provide the greater part of the sustenance of man and beast; hay and cereals, wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, sugar cane, sorghum and corn.  From an American viewpoint the greatest of these, physically and financially, is corn.  The corn crop of the United States for 1917, amounting to 3,159,000,000 bushels, brought in more money than the wheat, cotton, potato and rye crops all together.

When Columbus reached the West Indies he found the savages playing with rubber balls, smoking incense sticks of tobacco and eating cakes made of a new grain that they called mahiz.  When Pizarro invaded Peru he found this same cereal used by the natives not only for food but also for making alcoholic liquor, in spite of the efforts of the Incas to enforce prohibition.  When the Pilgrim Fathers penetrated into the woods back of Plymouth Harbor they discovered a cache of Indian corn.  So throughout the three Americas, from Canada to Peru, corn was king and it has proved worthy to rank with the rival cereals of other continents, the wheat of Europe and the rice of Asia.  But food habits are hard to change and for the most part the people of the Old World are still ignorant of the