Norwich bulletin., 1916-02-26

| the difference Is stated to pc approx | imately only half as much"
 When it comes to fish, we are not 'in it' with Japan. The feshermen
 of those little islands catch and sell | about one-third of all the fish taken in the world In a year, though their pop ulation is not one-fftieth of the worlds. Where we eat meat and wheat, they live on fish and rice, main ly,
 It probably wouldn't do us any harm and would certainly much reduce the cost of living if we Tanks should take at least a leaf or two out of their book. Fish is cheaper than meat, the seas are fuller of it than the land ever can be of cattle, and it is about as nourishing. Rice is cheaper than wheat, and a much more sustaining
 food, pound for pound.
 A half-and-half division of our eating between meat and fish, between ful reduction in our national food bill,
 at no likely cost to our health or vfgor.
 It's "nip and tuck' between these
 cereals, too, as to which is the most largely produced and widely eaten. Wheat is mostly grown in lands where the census -taker can get in his work, while rice is chiefly produced in Asia, where statistics are few and methods of gathering them crude It is known that the worlds total production of wheat approximate 4,0OO, 100000 bush els. The best estimates of rice pro- duction run between $500, 100000 and 5000, 100000 bushels, the United States produce about one-ffth of the worlds wheat; Asia produces,-and consumes more than nine-tenths of the rice. Recent medical discoveries make 1t fairly certain that an exclusive rice diet leads to the dreaded disease known in the east as beriberi. But the same science also declares that a too exclusive diet of our own Indian l'corn leads just as surely to tn equally dreadful disease, pellagra. Sensible people don't want to live ex- clusively on either.
 Corn is really, our big hold. The United States shells out annually about two-thirds of all the corn grown in the world. This seems natural, too, as corn is an American crop, native to this country, and presumably adapted to it's soils and climate. But those factors don't always control, as may be noted in the case of wheat and potatoes. Wheat is an Asian cereal by origin. Yet it is now grown ten times as widely in America and Flu rope as on the continent of it's origin. 1 Potatoes, on the other hand, are of American birth, yet Europe, which never saw one till after the discovery Of America, now produces ten bushels to our one.
 So it appears that the plants native to one continent can, in some cases, at least, be so acclimatized to another as to do even better in their adopted lands than in their original homes. It probably would be better for Asia and her people if she would raise and eat more corn and less ricE: equally probable that we should be wise to eat less corn and wheat and more rice. l The last will grow and do well in many parts of this country We all ready produce in the United States
 more than 700,0O0,000 pounds a year. | compared with our annual average i production of more than 1,500, 900, 900 l bushels of corn.
 Talking of American food plants 1t 1 is interesting to reflect upon what
 new variety the discovery of this hem | 1Sphere gave to the world. Corn of ! course leads the list; so distinctively | an American plant that we still call it | Indian corn, in memory of the braves ! who were growing it around their l WigWams ages before the first white i man ever saw their. shores.
 | Then comes the potato, first found in Peru, ony three centuries ago, and now cultivated all around the globe to 1 such an extent that it's annual dig DulHS up neafly equal to the entire l bushelage of all the wheat and corn l raised in the world.
 l The tomato, too, is a native Amer 1 ican. It leads all our vegetable in value, with a comercial production of about $14,000,000 a year, which. of course, doesn't include the untold
 quantities raised all over the country
 in small kitchen-gardens and consum- | ed fresh or home canned right on the farms. It's curious to note that while
 tomatoes rank first in value among our
 vegetables, excluding potatoes, of
 course, the onion comes second; sweet
 corn third; watermelons fourth;
 muskmelons fifth; green peas sixth 1 When it comes to fruits both the | banana and the pineapple are also
 Americans. It is hard to imagine a
 fruit-stand without it's bananas. Yet 1 it is less than fifty years since the l first banana was imported,-less than | thirty since it became a regular arti-
 cle of commerce. Now a whole fleet ! is required to handle the crop. Even ] New England takes about 1000, 900
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