re the tribe
stuck. It refused to budge.

In time, a certain phrase, current throughout that part of the world,
was used to describe this pleasant country: "A land flowing with milk
and honey!"

Unfortunately, it was a land, also, which could not fail, in the flower
of its wealth and luxury, to attract the attention of those savage
northerners who lived beyond this favored land. They came, they saw, and
eventually they conquered. When Rome had definitely destroyed the flower
of Asia Minor's civilization, the Roman proconsuls and merchants
"rescued" and carried back to Italy many of the rarest of Mesopotamia's
possessions. Among these, perhaps, were those indispensable
wonder-workers among the flowers, the better bees of Persia. And this
may be the reason why, these many centuries later, our bee experts still
recommend that, if we wish to increase the strength and productivity of
a backward hive of bees, we buy and introduce into the hive an Italian
queen. Her ancient and still prepotent virility can almost invariable be
relied upon to transfuse the colony with new and fruitful vigor. An
"Italian" queen, is it? We wonder, as we think of that venerable land of
Eden which once flowed with milk and honey, whether this so-called
Italian queen might not more correctly be named Persian.

You see, in this story we are traveling backwards into history like Ally
Oop in his time machine. But beyond Persia one can go only in
imagination. For the Persians, too, were a conquering nation and, no
doubt, gathered their booty of gold and sheep and camels, of flowers and
bees, from all the then known world which was subject to them. So
perhaps Persia, too, has no more right to label her treasures Persian
than has Italy with her presumably mislabeled Italian bees, nor England
with her undoubtedly mislabeled English walnuts. However, the work of
Johnny Appleseed has always belonged, not to his tribe nor to his
locality, but to the world. These same Persian walnuts take rank among
the better clues by which migrations of the Aryans may be traced over
the face of the earth. For instance, not only do they take root easily
in the mild, friendly climate of California, but much hardier strains
are found to have climbed the Carpathians and the steppes of Russia
almost to the very doors of Moscow. Scions of these hardier strains have
very recently been made to grow and yield their nuts in America as far
north as Toronto and are being set out in n