The grass family furnishes this second most important cereal to all Americans and Europeans, although among inhabitants of tropical regions rice is perhaps more important than either wheat or corn. With the discovery of America the early travelers found the North American Indians, the Mexicans, and the Peruvians all growing corn and using it on a considerable scale. It must have been grown for hundreds of years before that time, as its wide distribution and many varieties testified even at that date. Its true home nor its actual wild ancestor has never been certainly determined, but a wild plant very closely related to our modern corn is found in the northern part of South America, and either there or in Central America is apparently the ancient home of corn. So much had corn entered into the life of the early Mexicans that the first Europeans to visit that country found the Mexicans making elaborate religious offerings to their corn goddess. And, as in Egypt, the tombs of the Incas of Peru contain seeds of the cereal most prized, which in the case of corn consists of several varieties. While their civilization is not as old as certain Old World races, the cultivation of corn must date back to the very beginnings of the Christian era. It is now spread throughout the world in warm regions, and as early as 1597 it was grown in China, a fact that led to the erroneous notion that China was its true home. Perhaps no fact is more conclusive as to its American origin than that corn belongs to a genus _Zea_, which contains only the single species _mays_, with perhaps one or two varieties, and that until the discovery of America _Zea mays_ or Indian corn was unknown either as a wild or cultivated plant. Such an important cereal, if it actually were wild in the Old World, would have spread thousands of years ago as wheat did, and Columbus and his adventurous successors would not have brought from the New World a food that has since become second only to wheat. Field corn of several different sorts, pop corn, and sweet corn were all developed by the Indians from the ancient stock, but comparatively recently the juice of the stem has been used for making corn sirup. The use of the leaves for cattle feed is known to all farmers, and from its solid stems it is now likely that some fiber good for paper making will be extracted. RICE