In looking over the map of the Old World we see two extensive desert regions, that of Northern Africa and that of Central Asia. And when we realize that the only drawback to our beautiful California, is a climate too dry to be perrectly adapted to many of the products of the moist climate of Europe, and the scarcely less moist climate of the Eastern States, it becomes a subject of interest, of deep interest, to learn how mankind live in the dry regions of the earth, and what the earth produces in those dry countries.

Notably among those products suited to very dry climates is the sorghum or broom-corn family. History does not reach back to the beginning of its culture.