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or South America—the plains because annuals do not develop in forested regions. Under the circumstances, our search need only be the less troublesome absentia search in botanical records, since the regions have been combed by botanical explorers for three hundred years. The result as far as maize is concerned was nil. Perhaps though the word nothing is too exclusive. First cousins of our interesting family were discovered in Mexico and Guatemala, the plant called teosinte; and experimental evidence indicates a sufficiently near relation to justify these regions as the original home of the emigrant. This evidence, which gives us a picture of the original plant, is now to be considered.

Maize varieties differing slightly from each other are now numbered by the hundred. Of these, five or six differ by very distinct characters and have come to be thought of as subspecies. Those known as dent, flint, pop, sweet and flour corns are familiar to every one. One known as Curagua with toothed leaf edges, one with very hairy leaves known as hirta and one in which each seed is covered with husks or glumes known as tunicata are not so common. These varieties are our heritage from the aboriginal inhabitants, for each was known and cultivated somewhere