(Saxon cora), the grain or seeds of plants separated from the spica or ear, and used for making bread.

There are several species of corn, such as wheat, rye, and barley, millet and rice, oats, maize, and lentils, peas, and a number of other kinds, each of which has its peculiar qualities and usefulness. Egypt was anciently the most fertile of all countries in corn. This appears both from sacred and profane history. It supplied a considerable part of the people subject to the Roman empire, and was called the dry nurse of Rome and Italy. Ceres has the credit of being the first who taught them the use of corn, on which account she was ranked by them as a deity. Some, however, attributed the honour to Triptolemus; whilst others award the honour to both alike, making Ceres the first discoverer, and Triptolemus the first planter and cultivator of corn. Diodorus Siculus ascribes the whole to Isis; in which, as Polydore Virgil observes, he does not differ from other authors—Isis and Ceres being in reality the same person. The Athenians pretended that it was among them the art of sowing corn took its rise; and the Cretans or Candioti, Sicilians, and Egyptians, also lay claim to the distinction. Some think the title of the Sicilians best supported, Sicily being the country of Ceres; and it is alleged that she did not teach the secret to the Athenians till she had first instructed her own compatriots. Others says that Ceres passed first into Attica, thence into Crete, and last of all into Sicily. Many scholars, however, maintain that it was in Egypt that the art of cultivating corn first began; and it is certain that there was corn in Egypt and the East long before the time of Ceres.