-------------------------------------------------------------------- | WATER| PROTEINS| CARBOHYDRATES| FAT | MINERAL MATTER -------------+------+---------+--------------+-----+---------------- Potato | 75 | 1.2 | 18 | 0.3 | 1.0 Carrot | 89 | 0.5 | 5 | 0.2 | 1.0 Parsnip | 81 | 1.2 | 8.7 | 1.5 | 1.0 Turnip | 92.8 | 0.5 | 4. | 0.1 | 0.8 Onion | 91 | 1.5 | 4.8 | 0.2 | 0.5 Sweet potato | 74 | 1.5 | 20.2 | 0.1 | 1.5 Beet | 82.2 | 0.4 | 13.4 | 0.1 | 0.9 -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Illustration: Wheat Nuts Pear Melon Seeds and fruits used for food.] Fruits and Seeds as Foods.--Our cereal crops, corn, wheat, etc., have played a very great part in the civilization of man and are now of so much importance to him as food products that bread made from flour from the wheat has been called the "staff of life." Our grains are the cultivated progeny of wild grasses. Domestication of plants and animals marks epochs in the advance of civilization. The man of the stone age hunted wild beasts for food, and lived like one of them in a cave or wherever he happened to be; he was a nomad, a wanderer, with no fixed home. He may have discovered that wild roots or grains were good to eat; perhaps he stored some away for future use. Then came the idea of growing things at home instead of digging or gathering the wild fruits from the forest and plain. The tribes which first cultivated the soil made a great step in advance, for they had as a result a fixed place for habitation. The cultivation of grains and cereals gave them a store of food which could be used at times when other food was scarce. The word "cereal" (derived from Ceres, the Roman Goddess of Agriculture) shows the importance of this crop to Roman civilization. From earliest times the growing of grain and the progress of civilization have gone hand in hand. As nations have advanced in power, their dependence upon the cereal crops has been greater and greater. "Indian corn," says John Fiske, in _The Discovery of America_, "has played a most important part in the history of the New World. It could be planted without clearing or plowing the soil. There was no need of threshing or winnowing. Sown in tilled land, it yields more than twice as much food per acre as any other kind of grain. This was of incalculable advantage to the English settlers in New England, who would have found it much harder to gain a secure foothold upon the soil if they had had to begin by preparing it for wheat or rye."