eeding, 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