ore arid western
sections of the country. And beyond that the gastronomist of the
future will have to reckon with loin of hippopotamus!

The lower valley of the Mississippi is admirably suited to these
huge beasts, the flesh of one of which equals a score of cattle.
African traveled epicures maintain that hippopotamus steak is as
tender and inviting as the choicest beef. "For those who like that
sort of thing, it is just the sort of thing they would like."

It seems a bit remote to urge hippopotamus on us who do not yet know
enough to eat sharks, tortoises, painted turtles, or even English
sparrows. Anyhow the small gardener is more likely to succeed
raising pheasants than to muss with a hippopotamus, at least in the
suburbs. Pigs are more practical and make prettier pets.

Our population bids fair to approximate two hundred million within
the next fifty years, and, because of the exigencies of business, an
increasing number of people will be engaged in non-food-producing
vocations. These people, however, are all consumers and must be fed
and clothed, and even now America offers the greatest market for the
produce of the farm that any farmer in any country has ever had in
all history.

One of the coming ways of feeding them is the discovery and use of
new foods. As in other things, after the war, whether we live in a
better world or not, we shall live in an entirely different world,
new ways, strange thoughts, and other foods. For the most of the
following, _Business America_ and _Current Opinion_ are responsible.

For the creation of new crop varieties or the improvement of those
now in use we must depend upon the practical scientists who are
engaged in plant breeding. The work of one of these, Professor
Buffum, has been accomplished in a region that is apparently sterile
and where plants grow only by coaxing through artificial moisture.

His plant-breeding farms near Worland in the Big Horn Basin of
Northern Wyoming lie at an elevation of 4000 feet, in a region of
almost total natural aridity.

After twenty years' work in Western agricultural colleges and
Government Experiment Stations, Professor Buffum chose his present
location because nowhere in the United States could he find
conditions of soil and climate that induce to such a remarkable
degree the breaking up of species, and mutation or "sporting" of
plants.

When the modern plant breeder seeks to produce something new by
cross-fertilization a problem