existence, it
did not take them long to readjust themselves to the industry of
manufacture, the water-power being the natural resource that made the
industry profitable.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Were the middle Atlantic coast of the United States to undergo an
elevation of 100 feet, what would be the effect on New York City?

Find the factors that led to the settlement of the city or town in which
or near which you live. What caused the settlement of the three or four
largest towns in the same county?--of the following places: Minneapolis,
Fall River, New Haven, New Bedford, Cairo (Ill.), Cairo (Egypt),
Marseille, Aix-la-Chapelle, Alexandria (Egypt), Washington (D.C.),
Columbus (O.), Johannesburg (Africa), Kimberley (Africa), Albany (N.Y.),
Punta Arenas (S.A.), Scranton (Pa.), Vancouver (B.C.), San Francisco,
Cape Nome?

What circumstances connected with commerce led to the passing of the
following-named places: Palmyra, Carthage, Babylon, Genoa, Venice,
Ancient Rome, Jerusalem?

COLLATERAL REFERENCE

Any good cyclopaedia.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CEREALS AND GRASSES

Of all the plants connected with the economies of mankind the grasses
hold easily the first place. Not only are the seeds of certain species
the chief food of nearly all peoples, but the plants themselves are the
food of most animals whose flesh is used as meat. Wheat, maize, and rice
are used by all except a very few peoples; and about all the animals
used for food, fish and mollusks excepted, are grain eaters, or grass
eaters, or both.

The grasses of the Plains in Texas, the Veldt in South Africa, and the
hills of New Zealand by nature's processes are converted into meat that
feeds the great cities of western Europe and the eastern United States.
The corn of the Mississippi valley becomes the pork which, yielded from
the carcasses of more than forty million swine, is exported to half the
countries of the world. Even the two and one-half billion pounds of wool
consumed yearly is converted grass.

=Wheat.=--The wheat of commerce is the seed of several species of cereal
grass, one of which, _Triticum sativum_, is the ordinary cultivated
plant. Wild species are found in the highlands of Kurdistan, in Greece,
and in Mesopotamia, that are identical with species cultivated to-day.
It is thought that the cultivation of the grain began in Mesopotamia,
but it is also certain that it was grown by the Swiss lake-dwellers far
back in prehist