From: alex (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Sun 19 Jun 1994 - 20:02:40 EEST
Colin Watson:
> Corn is corn.
> *Sweet*corn is maize.
Even an unreconstructed Old Worlder like me knows that sweetcorn is a _kind_ of maize, not a synonym for it.
> Scottish (not Sartarite) crops:
> I think it's the low temperature rather than lack of sunshine which restricts
> Scottish crops: my wife's granny used to grow grapes and peaches in Orkney
> (which is pretty far north); she used a greenhouse. I reckon a casting of
> Bless Crops might do as good.
I don't think so, myself; I know Joerg speaks of Bless Crops as an agricultural necessity in the same way as Anglian wheat farmers speak glowingly of nitrogenous chemical fertilisers, but note that all the spell is stated to do is guarantee an "average" yield of crops. Nothing is said about making ungrowable crops growable, or increasing the modal yield (though obviously it improves the mean...)
But I agree that some kind of sunlight/heat increasing magic would do the job, though I don't think it's necessary in Sartar (not Scotland).
> In prehistoric times it was apparently warm enough to grow wheat in Orkney.
> Now it's too cold. Oats and barley only.
Be fair, we are still only half way out the last ice age.
> When the Game Police confiscate your motorbike; cast Mobility instead.
Another born-again Mastakos herder, I see. I feel an Orlanthi recitation coming on... "And truly was the three-hooved sigh whole upon his breast."
Alex.
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