As the covered wagon went westward, many a fine piece of furniture and valued silverware was left behind, but not the seeds and plants that had been selected through so many trying years and upon which the settlers pinned their hopes in the wider fields and blacker soils of the West. Once again they were met with disappointment. The Bartlett pears and Baldwin apples could not survive the winters that were even colder than those in the East. Corn from east of the Alleghenies withered and died, scorched by the hot dry winds of the prairies. The wheat was devoured by grasshoppers, stung by the Hessian fly, sucked dry by plant lice, and rusted and blackened by fungous diseases. Even the flowers that grew with so little care along the seacoast and the inland valleys became discouraged and failed to bloom.

Again began the laborious process of searching for new crops that would stay green when the old ones withered. As more of the fields were plowed, the grasshoppers came in fewer numbers. And the newcomers gradually learned when to plant to avoid the flies, and how to produce varieties that would not rust or smut even in years when the old crops were badly damaged.

To take the place of the Baldwins and Greenings they found the Jonathan, Winesap, and Ben Davis apples. Red raspberries would not grow, so they found large-fruited plants of the wild black kind. Hardy plums were crossed with sweeter kinds, and a new fruit is now grown wherever plums are wanted. To take the place of the laurel and rhododendron about the house, coralberries and snowberries were taken from the pastures. Flowers were brought from the drier and warmer regions of the earth, and bloomed abundantly. Vegetable varieties were found that would do well on the various soils and in the dry air.

The early settlers first used pigs and poultry, but the larger farm animals were brought over as soon as their means permitted. The ocean passage required about three months, and this was very trying for animals in confinement, half of a shipment often dying en route. Food and water for the voyage were no small items. As the farmers became more prosperous, they brought from England the finest Shorthorn and Hereford cattle that money could buy, the best Shropshire and Southdown sheep, and Yorkshire and Berkshire pigs. From France came Percheron horses, and from Germany came Holstein cows. All of these breeds had been centuries in the making, but many of them have since been brought to their finest development in the valleys of the Ohio and the Missouri.

The possibilities from new animal importations are by no means exhausted. Reindeer from Northern Europe have recently been established in Alaska and are valuable producers of meat. A pigmy hippopotamus from Liberia has been suggested as a meat animal for southern swamps. Ostriches are grown in the Southwest. Zebus from India, crossed with native cattle in the South, thrive where the older breeds are subject to disease. In return for all these valuable animals from Europe, America has sent back little in kind. The native bison has possibilities as a meat producer, but up to the present time has never been used profitably in any part of the world. The mountain sheep and prairie hen were large enough to be used, but the animals of this type already tamed were so well developed and so tractable that no one had the patience to spend time and effort in domesticating the former. In South America the llama and alpaca are used locally but do not seem to have much value for other parts of the world. The only animals to be taken back to Europe and used were the guinea pig from the southern continent and the turkey from the north - and neither of these is important. Our plants have been more useful. Maize, originating in Central America, is now grown in Southern Europe and in parts of Asia, Africa, and Australia.

The original home of maize was wrongly identified because the names under which it was first grown in Europe indicated an eastern origin. The word maize (mays) is American, as it comes from the Mayan tribe in Central America, but this name was not used at first. In English, the term Indian corn suggests India as its home. In French, ble de Turquie, or Turkish wheat, indicates Asia Minor as its birthplace. But since maize is not wheat, one may also suppose it is not Turkish. Many plants are thus wrongly named. English walnuts did not originate in England, nor are they extensively grown there. Oriental persimmons are called date plums, although they are not related to dates, nor are they plums. The Jerusalem artichoke shows how misleading a name can be. The edible part of this plant is the root and not the blossom bud of the true artichoke. Nor did it come from Jerusalem; it is, in fact, the only cultivated plant native to the temperate region of North America. Its name seems to be merely a corruption of the Italian girasole meaning sunflower. As one botanist puts it, "we thus see how much worse a double name is, since if it be single only one mistake is possible."

The names which have been given to corn in Europe simply indicate a foreign origin. Maize was called Roman corn in Central Europe, Sicilian corn in Italy, and Turkish corn in Sicily. The Turks called it Egyptian corn, while in Egypt it passed as Syrian dourra. No word for this grain has been found in the ancient European and Asiatic languages. An ear of corn was found entombed with an Egyptian mummy, but it is certain that this was the work of a modern impostor, since the seeds grew when planted. If maize had been grown in Egypt by the Egyptians, it surely would have been pictured in their paintings and sculptures, along with their other valuable plants.