All the grains, such as wheat, corn, rye, or oats, the roots, such as potatoes, beets, carrots, parsnips, and the like, and the many other vegetables we eat, once grew wild, and were very small and hard. But every sort of plant grows better, and has larger seeds and roots and fruit, if it is cultivated, that is, if the soil in which it grows is loosened up and made soft, so that the rain can easily get to its roots, and the roots can spread out, sucking moisture and chemicals from the ground. For this reason the early men found that the grains, or roots which they planted, kept growing larger and better to eat, year after year, and as the valley and the country around it became filled with people, and food became scarce and harder to get, the people in the valley who did not move away began to plant and grow many of these roots and grains, and they were the first farmers. As Mother Nature had so often told the Sun, it was the search for food, the struggle to keep alive, that taught the first people almost everything they knew. At first, the people chewed the hard grains, and swallowed them, just as they would eat nuts, but it was a good deal of trouble to do this, so while the men were away hunting, the women would take the grains and pound them up in a hollow stone, with another stone, round and smooth, and sometimes having a handle to it. This made a coarse kind of flour. Adding a little water to it, they mixed a sort of paste, which they moulded into little cakes and placed in the sun to dry. In this way they made the first bread. Later on, instead of drying these cakes in the sun, they found they could do it more quickly by placing them on flat stones, heated very hot in a fire, and these cooked cakes of oats, and wheat and rye soon became one of their chief articles of food. They found it easy to keep the grains and roots during the winter by storing them in their caves, usually in great earthen jars. They tried to keep some of the fruits in this way too, berries, and wild grapes, but the fruits would not keep. Instead, they turned sour and fermented, forming wine, which the people drank, when they were tired, and cold, to cheer them up. Among the very earliest peoples of which we have any record, wine was used; we find it spoken of often in the Bible, and the writings on the tablets of clay dug up in the most ancient ruins. Living as they did a rough life in the open air, these early peoples could drink wines without harm. It was not until thousands of years later that men found out how to distil the strong spirits and liquors which are so harmful to people living the indoor lives we lead to-day. [Illustration: EARLY METHODS OF BREAD AND FIRE MAKING]