UNCOOKED FOODS

hands the barrel of a Springfield rifle into a shapeless mass in an instant.

Every step that man has taken in the long and devious road of civilization, added to his love of travel and romance, and his instinctive curiosity, and unsatisfied desire for something — anything he did not possess.

Every step that he took beyond the limits of his own country involved the question of food. Especially as he migrated northward the storing of food products to tide him over from season to season became a question of very great impor- tance, one that involved the question of life and death. All the faculties were employed almost wholly in his endeavor to solve this one dominant question. He began to think, to study, to ex- periment.

He had emigrated bevond the limits of his native land, where he could live from the bounti- ful prodigality of nature. He found himself con- fronted by all the hazardous vicissitudes of cli- mate and vegetation. Roots, herbs and every vegetable thing was tested as food, and during periods of famine and hunger, in sheer despera- tion he slew and preyed upon even ansmal life.^

It is certain that the custom of flesh eating among the ancients began Avith the direst neccs-

FOOD PRODUCTS. 31

sity, with the choice between that or death by starvation.

The first cereal product known to history was a small seed or berry, the product of a wild grass called sativa or sativum. From triticum sativum was developed the wheat plant; from orysa sativa came the rice. These two great staples came substantially from the same root. The one planted in the more northern latitudes produced the wheat, while the same plant In the tropical and semi-tropical regions developed the rice.

It was during the time that man was sorely put to It to find and produce foods which he could store for winter use, probably, that foods classed as legumes, that Is to say, every product that grows in a pod, of the bean and pea variety, be- came so highly developed and universally used. There are about 7,000 species In the legume fam- ily contained in about 450 different genera.

The enormous variety of things that could be used as food because they would sustain life, which had been discovered by mankind in his more primitive years, were passed on from generation to generation and mixed, crossed and combined to appease the appetite of the wealthier classes. Be- sides this extensive bill of fare that had been dis- covered and compiled from necessity, the earth’s surface was again scoured to find things that