128 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



the small white and black spotted goat-like animal found on 

 the Missouri and Arkansas. The synonyme of Antilope 

 furcifer, A. tememazama, (Smith,) and Ovis montana is still 

 very uncertain. 



(27) p. 11. — " The culture of farinaceous grasses.' 1 '' 



The original habitat of the farinaceous grasses, like that of 

 the domestic animals which have followed man since his 

 earliest migrations, is shrouded in obscurity. Jacob Grimm 

 has ingeniously derived the German name for corn, Getraide, 

 from the old German " gitragidi," " getregede." " It is as it 

 were the tame fruit {fruges, frumentuni) that has fallen into 

 the hands of man, as we speak of tame animals in opposition 

 to those that are wild.' * 



"It is a most striking fact that on one half of our planet 

 there should be nations who are wholly unacquainted with the 

 use of milk and of the meal yielded by narrow-eared grasses, 

 (Hordeacea and Avenacece) whilst in the other hemisphere 

 nations may be found in almost every region who cultivate 

 cereals and rear milch cattle. The culture of different cereals 

 is common to both hemispheres ; but while in the New Conti- 

 nent we meet with only one species, maize, which is cultivated 

 from 52° north to 46° south lat., we find that in the Old World 

 the fruits of Ceres, (wheat, barley, spelt, and oats,) have been 

 everywhere cultivated from the earliest ages recorded in history. 

 The belief that wheat grew ivild in the Leontine plains as well 

 as in other parts of Sicily was common to several ancient 

 nations, and is mentioned as early as Diodorus Siculus.f 

 Cereals were also found in the alpine meadow of Enna. 

 Diodorus says expressly, " The inhabitants of the Atlantis 

 were unacquainted with the fruits of Ceres, owing to their 

 having separated from the rest of mankind before those fruits 

 were made known to mortals." Sprengel has collected 

 several interesting facts from w r hich he is led to conjecture 

 that the greater number of our European cereals originally 

 grew wild in Northern Persia and India. He supposes for in- 

 stance that summer Avheat was indigenous in the land of the 

 Musicani, a province of Northern India ;$ barley, antiquissi- 



* Jacob Griinm, Gesch. der Deutschen Sprache, 1848, th. i. s. 62. 

 f lib. v. pp. 199, 232. Wessel. 

 % Strabo, xv.1017. 



