The word maize, (Indian corn) is
derived from mahiz or mahis, the name of the plant in the language of
the Island of Hayti. And yet, strange to may, in the Lettish and
Livonian languages, in the north of Europe, mayse signifies bread; in
Irish, maise is food, and in the Old High German, maz is meat. May not
likewise the Spanish maiz have antedated the time of Columbus, and borne
testimony to early intercommunication between the people of the Old and
New Worlds?
It is to Atlantis we must look for the origin of nearly all our valuable
plants. Darwin says ("Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. i.,
p. 374), "It has often been remarked that we do not owe a single useful
plant to Australia, or the Cape of Good Hope--countries abounding to an
unparalleled degree with endemic species--or to New Zealand, or to
America south of the Plata; and, according to some authors, not to
America north of Mexico." In other words, the domesticated plants are
only found within the limits of what I shall show hereafter was the
Empire of Atlantis and its colonies; for only here was to be found an
ancient, long-continuing civilization, capable of developing from a wild
state those plants which were valuable to man, including all the cereals
on which to-day civilized man depends for subsistence.
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