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?

Let us guess at the method he used. As the nomad tribe passed from place
to place with its goats, its sheep, its camels, Johnny with his sons and
grandsons would take to prettying up the camp sites a bit. He
particularly like the dates from one palm that grew upon an oasis far
down the desert. He carried the seeds from this tree and planted them at
various stopping places. He did the same thing with some especially
sweet nuts from a walnut tree which he had found, let us say, in the
Caucasus Mountains. He set out many bright-blossomed desert weeds in
order to attract the wild honey bees. Bees! Wherever there were bees, he
had found flowers that reproduced themselves, trees that bore fruit.
Some of these bees he found to be good workers and others he found lazy,
quarrelsome and inefficient. He killed out the quarrelsome colonies and
built hiding places for the better ones. In short, he did so much to
make the camping places cozy, comfortable and in every way desirable
that finally it became more and more difficult for the tribe to tear
itself away on moving day. By reason of the small irrigation
arrangements which Johnny had found desirable for his plantings and his
bees, grass became more abundant and the flocks did not need to be
moved so often. In time, the whole tribe wakened to the fact that a
revolution had taken place. They did not need to move at all, ever!
There was plenty of grumbling from the die-hards, but he