A CHRONICLE OF THE TRIBE OF CORN 227 



The sagas of Iceland show unquestionably that some time about the 

 year 1000 the Norsemen landed in North America. Where they landed 

 has been a question. The sagas describe the natives they met, the 

 Skrellings, as small and ugly, great of eye and broad of cheek. "And 

 they came in skin canoes." The description fits only the Esquimaux. 

 The sagas relate further, however, that the Norsemen found mosurr 

 wood and self-sown wheat and that in the spring they filled their boats 

 with " wine berries." Students of the sagas have taken the wineberries 

 to be grapes, the self-sown wheat to be wild rice and the mosurr wood 

 to be maple. There were discrepancies here. The ethnologists say the 

 Esquimaux have not wandered south, and the botanists find that the 

 grape and the wild-rice do not grow in the northeast. It may also be 

 pointed out that grapes are not gathered in the spring even in the most 

 flourishing circumstances. 



Some have ridiculed the sagas, some have brought the Esquimaux 

 as far south as Boston, others have turned the Skrellings into Indians 

 in spite of their description. It remained for a botanist, Professor M. 

 L. Fernald, to show that the mosurr wood is birch, that the wild wheat 

 is the Strand wheat (Elymus arenarius) a plant familiar to the Ice- 

 landers, and that the wineberry is either the mountain cranberry that is 

 in its prime in the spring or one of the wild currants, both plants being 

 known to the Norsemen as vinber or wine berries. The plentiful occur- 

 rence of these species north of the St. Lawrence River straightens out 

 all the inconsistencies and makes the geography, ethnology and biology 

 of the old sagas perfectly plausible. 



This short illustration typifies the method of the botanical his- 

 torian, though perhaps the details of his work had best be explained. 

 Foremost in the significance of its evidence is the geographical distri- 

 bution of the wild plant and its subvarieties. From this knowledge one 

 may sometimes locate the point of origin with surprising definitenoss. 

 But often an important cultivated species has no known progenitor in 

 the wild. This lack of information is unfortunate for the investigator, 

 but not prohibitive of results. It makes the problem only that much 

 more interesting. The next point of attack is to discover the distribu- 

 tion of the wild species nearest related by their structure and character- 

 istics to the material under investigation. The fact that an organic 

 evolution has occurred is the master key that unlocks many problems. 

 Classification along natural lines was made possible by establishing the 

 fact of evolution. The relatives of plants are hall-marked in a manner 

 not often mistakable, and if the general family group is not too widely 

 distributed, the problem may be considered as fairly well along. 



If there are no near relatives extant, if the plant is the last leaf 

 upon the family tree, one must turn to the evidence of the plant itself. 

 By this I mean he must study the inheritance of the various characters 



