Lura McCarty., ,age 10, of Kettle Falls, Wash., for her question:

Did the Indians have sweet corn?

Corn is a cereal of the New World and its history goes back for many thousands of years. The Indians judged their corn by its pretty colors and grew varieties in red, pink, blue, black and blotchy mixtures of these colors. The settlers from the Old World developed flavor and other qualities.

Around 1779 sweet corn was found growing in Pennsylvania and immediately became a favorite variety. Since then we have developed more than 1,000 different varieties. From our point of view they are superior to the corn grown by the Indians. But the ancestors of all our different varieties were known and grown countless generations before Columbus set sail for the New World.