Just as, in the middle ages, the monasteries of Europe and Asia kept alive the tiny flame of Greek and Roman culture throughout the foggy ignorance of the Dark Ages, so did the priests of Baal, of Ashtoreth, of Marduk and of Ormuzd pass on the torch of their day to their successors who were Greeks and Romans. The Eleusinian mysteries, which at a later time were associated with a considerable amount of sensual, closely guarded ritual, were, in the Greek period, celebrated in the temple of Ceres in Eleusis. The origin of these sacred mysteries is lost in the shadow of profound antiquity. We know, only, that they were in the safekeeping of many generations of priests who jealously guarded them from thieving and ignorant conquerors. These mysteries were probably, at bottom, a body of scientific truths. They undoubtedly had to do with a store of information, painfully gleaned for generations, about those facts of reproduction, selection and beneficient fertility which are so close to the Holy of Holies of creation itself. Probably these precious mysteries could be simmered down to a few fundamentals and such as are now generally practiced by all plant and animal breeders. And they are not fully understood today, any more than they were fully understood three thousand years ago. By the practice of these simple arts, hedged in with taboos and religious inhibitions, Persia, Assyria, and all Mesopotamia became the garden spot of the world where things seemed to grow as they grew no place else. Here, in fact, was said to have been located the only genuine and original Garden of Eden, pointed out to this day by the faithful as the veritable spot where the father and mother of the race lived in a laborless, exhaustless Paradise. Mention has been made of the probability that the Persians, who originally were nomadic and therefore were chiefly interested in the domestication of animals--which means, really, selective breeding--used this knowledge in plant breeding when they finally settled down. The big leap from nomadic to settled life must have caused the old timers of that day plenty of headaches. It was a new deal to top all New Deals. Was it, perhaps, some Johnny Appleseed who engineered the New Deal of that day?