Cereals
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Cereals. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a term derived from Ceres, the goddess of corn. Beans, peas, and lentils are sometimes included among the cereals, but, properly speaking, the term is confined to the flour- and meal-producing seeds of plants belonging to the grass family. The eight prominent cereals of North America are Indian corn or maize, wheat, rye, oats, barley, buckwheat, rice, and Kaffir corn. They furnish the larger part of human food. Speltz and millet may be added to the list. Buckwheat is not a grass, but is included usually because of its use as buckwheat flour. The following tables are arranged from the last United States Census Report: Grain. Acres. Bushels per Acre. Barley 4,470,196 26.8 Buckwheat 807,060 13.9 Corn 94,916,911 28.1 Kaffir corn 266,513 19.4 Oats 29,539,698 31.9 Rice 351,344 13.5 Rye 2,054,292 12.4 Wheat 52,588,574 12.5 All cereals 184,994,588 Bushels. Value. Barley 119,634,877 $41,631,762 Buckwheat 11,233,515 5,747,853 Corn 2,666,440,279 828,258,326 Kaffir corn 5,169,113 1,367,040 Oats 943,389,375 217,098,584 Rice 4,728,710 7,891,613 Rye 25,568,625 12,290,540 Wheat 658,534,252 369,945,320 All cereals 4,434,698,746 $1,484,231,038 See Agriculture Ceres, se'rez, in Roman mythology, the goddess of grain and harvest, whence the term, cereal. No special myth seems to have been attached to her worship until the fifth century, when the Romans identified with her the Greek Demeter, introducing from Sicily the rites of worship performed in honor of the Greek goddess. They also adopted the Greek myths connected with Demeter, especially that of Persephone, the Roman Proserpine. See Demeter
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a term derived from Ceres, the goddess of corn; though sometimes extended to leguminous plants, as beans, lentils, etc., is more usually and properly confined to the Gramineæ, as wheat, barley, rye, oats, and other grasses, cultivated for the sake of their seed as food.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The definition Aiton's gave in 1910 and Collier's repeated in 1921 — grasses grown for their edible seed, with buckwheat admitted on the strength of its flour — still holds, but the numbers behind it have been transformed. Aiton's table records American corn at 28.1 bushels an acre and wheat at 12.5; US corn now averages around 175 bushels and wheat about 50, the result of hybrid maize (commercial from the 1930s) and the semi-dwarf, fertilizer-responsive wheats and rices of the Green Revolution, for which Norman Borlaug took the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. The crop list has shifted too: oats, at 29.5 million acres the second-largest American cereal in Aiton's table, collapsed as tractors replaced draft horses and is now a minor crop, while "Kaffir corn" is today called grain sorghum, the old name having fallen out of use as a slur.
Written for this edition, 2026.