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Show ,0 0-0-0-0CK--0----GO' :: How the Useful : :; Plants Came i!A to Mankind :: '4 li: I:? By T. E. STEWARD Y.. . ,6 WNU Service 6' 1 ?llllHmMMMHH The Turnip WITH the turnip we come again to a plant native to the temperate temper-ate regions, growing wild in one of its several forms In Sweden, England, Germany, Holand, Finland, Denmark and, probably, in Siberia. Cabbages, cultivated for their leaves ; cauliflower, for Its flower stalk, and rape, which is grown for the oil that can be extracted from its seeds, are all species of the same genus as the turnip. When the root or lower part of the stem is fleshy, as Is true of turnips, the seed is not abundant nor worth the trouble of pressing for oil. On the otner hand, the slender-rooted varieties produce large quantities of seed. Thus the shape of the root determines the economic eco-nomic use of the plant Ancient European languages all have names for the turnip, while all of the names applied to it in India, China, and Japan have the modern ring and only add to the evidence that la Asia the plant has been introduced. Old works on botany in China and India contain no mention or picture of the turnip in cultivation or wild. De Candolle gives four conclusions regarding the Brassica or turnip species, spe-cies, as follows: 1. The brassicae with fleshy roots were originally natives of temperate Europe; 2, their cultivation cultiva-tion was diffused in Europe before, but In Asia, after, the Aryan invasion inva-sion of Europe; 3, the primitive, slen der-rooted form of brassica napis, called brassica campestris, or of the field, had from the beginning a more extended range, from the Scandinavian Scandina-vian peninsula towards Siberia and the Caucasus. Its cultivation was, perhaps, introduced into China and Japan, Ja-pan, through Siberia, at an epoch which .appears not to be much earlier than the Graeco-Roman civilization. In the last place, he says, turnips spread into southwestern . Asia at a period later than that of the Hebrew civilization, as this vegetable seems to have been known among the Hebrews. The turnip has a name of its own In practically all of the old European tongues. The 'turnip Is cultivated so easily and spreads so readily that it may be found in a semi-wild state almost al-most anywhere in Europe today in spots were it has escaped from cultivation. culti-vation. There is abundant evidence, however, that it also grows in an actually actu-ally wild state in the many regions already al-ready enumerated and is a true European, Euro-pean, especially in the fleshy-stemmed variety, which is of most importance to mankind as a food. Rice RICE, the principal food of the teeming Eastern peoples, is native na-tive to China and to other warm, damp, regions in the eastern and southern parts of Asia, including many parts of India. As a cultivated grain, however, it is the gift of China to the world. For many centuries be-, ior Christ it was cultivated in China, Siam and India, and much more recently re-cently it spread into the Near East, and thence. Into Egypt. At the time of Alexander's expeditions into India, about 400 B. C, rice-growing had reached Mesopotamia, but probably not Egypt. In the annual ceremony of planting Instituted by the Chinese emperor, Chin-nong, in 2800 B. C, rice plays the principal part among the five food plants sown, which are rice, wheat, sorghum, millet and the soy bean. All of these were presumed by Chin-nong to be native to China. Certainly Cer-tainly rice was, as was the soy bean. In a treatise on the origin of rice, De Candolle reports that, "the Old Testament does not mention rice, but a careful and judicious writer, Rey-j Rey-j nier, has remarked several passages in the Talmud which relate to its cultivation. These facts lead us to suppose that the Indians cultivated rice after the Chinese and that It spread later toward the Euphrates, earlier, however, than the Aryan Invasion In-vasion into India. A thousand years elapsed between the existence of rice cultivation in Babylonia and its transportation Into Syria, whence it was introduced into Egypt only after the interval of two or three centuries more. There is no trace of rice among the grain remains in tombs, or any depiction of it in the paiut-ings paiut-ings of ancient Egypt. A wild rice that belongs to the true family grows abundantly in certain districts of the northern United States. Wild rice also grows abundantly abun-dantly in some parts of India. It was inevitable, however, that a country so well adapted to agriculture agricul-ture conducted by irrigation as Egypt was, should eventually adopt rice. It was carried into Spain by the Arabs during the Moorish domination of the Iberian peninsula, but was not cultivated culti-vated in Italy until 143S. About the middle of the last century it was brought to' America as a field crop and planted in Louisiana, where It now flourishes, as It does on some of the adjacent lands in southern Texas, Tex-as, along the gulf coast The Sanskrit name for rice was r.runya, the ancient Greek, ornzon, the Arab name, rouz or arous. from ' which came the Spanish arroz. It ! can be seen that the English word bears a close relationship to these. I (0. 1328. Western Newspaper Union.) |