We usually find, today, that the best plants and animals have had their start in some center of old civilization. China, Manchuria, Japan, Indo-China, India, Persia, Asia Minor, Central America, Oceania—these places, the nurseries of all existing races of men are today the bonanza spots for these explorers. Such a coincidence could hardly have been due to chance. It must surely occur to the mind of anyone who cares to put two and two together that, in each of these centers, other ancient gatherers and planters had been busy in their day, just as our own explorers and experiment station scientists are carrying on today—our modern, scientific Johnny Appleseeds.
It is hardly possible, here, to follow to the ends of the earth all of the trails of the tribe of Johnny Appleseed. One little section will do well enough for purposes of illustration. Let us consider Iran, or, as our fathers knew it, Persia. Here is a field that, possibly because of previous plunderings, is not now the most fruitful of our sources of plant and animal discovery, yet it is an eye-opener, and will do very well as a type of similar test-plots throughout the world.
Here is a short list of only a few of the plants which have been developed for centuries, and were reported in the last century as growing in Persia—many, no doubt, descended from stocks which once grew in the famous hanging gardens of Babylon: apples, pears, filberts muskmelons, watermelons, grapes, peaches, plums, nectarines. And of flowers, these: marigold, chrysanthemum, hollyhock, narcissus, tulip, tuberose, aster, wallflower, dalia, white lily, hyacinth, violet, larkspur, pink and finally, the famous rose of Persia, from whence comes the attar of roses for which Persia is still famous. It would seem that someone must have possessed a knowledge of plant propagation in Persia centuries ago.
Several of these products have had their influence upon the history and poetry of the world. It will be remembered by most high school students that when the Caesars and big shots of Rome and Greece wished to create a big splash in the social ponds of their day, they sent, at enormous expense, for melons and dates from Persia. Melons, in particular, seemed to be the high spot in those Lucullan feasts, and, in this connection it is well to remember that Lucullus, himself, as commanding general of a Roman legion, had long lived in Persia and had, no doubt, acquired a taste for Persian delicacies. His princely estates near Rome, no doubt, grew rare plants from Asia Minor and were very likely tended by the skilled Aryan, early Accadian or Semitic gardeners of Persia. These slaves were probably descended from and were heir to the trade secrets of some of the very builders of that seventh wonder of the world, the hanging gardens of Babylon. Except for those forgotten workers from Persia, one may well wonder whether, today, our Rocky Ford, Ohio Sugar, or Hearts-of-Gold muskmelon delicacies would exist at all.
An interesting side-light may be found in the history of the peach. Originally this fruit was in all probability a poisonous variety of almond. What wizard, or succession of wizards, was it who created a peach from a pest—an asset from a liability? Persian, probably. Whoever did it, it constitutes one of the outstanding miracles of plant breeding, whether natural or artificial. The poison was sealed within the seed (where it remains to this day) and the nectar of the gods was bred into the pulp around it.
Consider also the Persian walnut, now, for some strange reason, popularly called "English" walnut. This delicacy, too, was unlikely to have happened merely by chance. It was, no doubt, bred by a race of men trained in observation and experiment such as the Persians preeminently were. Having first been nomads, domesticators and breeders of animals; they eventually became husbandmen, breeders of trees and plants, and they undoubtedly found that the principles which were so usefully employed in producing animal variations could also be used in producing and fixing plant varieties. The pollen or germ of an outstanding good male individual, when brought into contact with the pistil or ovum of an outstanding female individual of the same species will produce a scion that is more likely than any other to have good qualities. Here was the secret of most of the progress which has been made in both animal and plant breeding, a secret of immense value—so valuable, in fact, that it was guarded for generation after generation by a close-mouthed priesthood.
Just as, in the middle ages, the monasteries of Europe and Asia kept alive the tiny flame of Greek and Roman culture throughout the foggy ignorance of the Dark Ages, so did the priests of Baal, of Ashtoreth, of Marduk and of Ormuzd pass on the torch of their day to their successors who were Greeks and Romans. The Eleusinian mysteries, which at a later time were associated with a considerable amount of sensual, closely guarded ritual, were, in the Greek period, celebrated in the temple of Ceres in Eleusis. The origin of these sacred mysteries is lost in the shadow of profound antiquity. We know, only, that they were in the safekeeping of many generations of priests who jealously guarded them from thieving and ignorant conquerors. These mysteries were probably, at bottom, a body of scientific truths. They undoubtedly had to do with a store of information, painfully gleaned for generations, about those facts of reproduction, selection and beneficient fertility which are so close to the Holy of Holies of creation itself. Probably these precious mysteries could be simmered down to a few fundamentals and such as are now generally practiced by all plant and animal breeders. And they are not fully understood today, any 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 here the tribe stuck. It refused to budge.