field
planted with banana trees and one of equal size planted with wheat
stands as 133 to 1. While our wheat yields in favorable soil 12 to 20
times its seed, rice in its home yields 80 to 100, maize 250 to 300
times as much. In many regions, the Philippine Islands among them, the
productivity of rice is estimated at 400 times as much. The question
with all these articles of food is to render them as nourishing as
possible by the manner in which they are prepared. Chemistry has in this
a boundless field for development.

Central and South America, especially Brazil, which alone is almost as
large as all Europe--Brazil has 152,000 square miles with about
15,000,000 inhabitants, as against Europe's 178,000 square miles and
about 340,000,000 inhabitants--are big with a luxuriance and fertility
that stir the astonishment and wonderment of all travelers, besides
being inexhaustibly rich in minerals. Nevertheless, until now they are
almost closed to the world because their population is indolent and
stands, both in point of numbers and of culture, too low to overmaster
the power of Nature. How matters look in Africa we have been enlightened
on by the discoveries of recent years. Even if a good part of Central
Africa never be fit for European agriculture, there are other regions of
vast size that can be put to good use the moment rational principles of
colonization are applied. On the other hand, there are in Asia not only
vast and fertile territories, able to feed thousands of millions of
people, but the past has also shown how in places that are there now
sterile and almost desert, the mild climate once conjured up an
abundance of food from the soil, provided only man knows how to lead to
it the blessing-bestowing water. What with the destruction of the
marvelous aqueducts and contrivances for irrigation in Asia Minor and in
the regions of the Tigris and the Euphrates, with vandalic wars of
conquest and the insane oppression of the people by the conquerors,
fields, thousands of square miles wide, have been transformed into sandy
deserts. Likewise in Northern Africa, Spain, Mexico and Peru. Let there
be produced millions of civilized human beings, and inexhaustible
sources of food will be unlocked. The fruit of the date tree thrives
marvelously in Asia and Africa, and it takes up so little room that 200
trees can go on one acre of land. The durria bears in Egypt more than
3,000 fold, and yet the country is poor--not by reason