WittmacJe — Our Present Knowledge of Ancient Plants. 11 



IV. FRUITS. 



Figs, olives, almonds, dates, chestnuts, walnuts, hazel- 

 nuts, and some preserved fruits, which, perhaps, are cherries 

 and grapes. 



v. ROOTS. 



Onions and leek. 



Nearly all these objects are carbonized and black, only the 

 millet is grayish-yellow. The single peach-stone is also not 

 carbonized, it looks nearly like a fresh peach-stone and per- 

 haps is an accidental find. I may say that almonds and 

 peaches were introduced into Italy scarcely 100 years before 

 Christ. 



As to the Cereals, Pompeiian barley does not offer much in- 

 terest. It appears to be like the Egyptian, the small barley, 

 Hordeum hexastichum or tetraslichum (H. vidgare). The 

 wheat is the common wheat, Triticum vxdgare, at least, I could 

 not find with certainty the hardy wheat, Triticum durum, 

 which is now so often cultivated in Southern Italy because it 

 gives the best Macaroni and Spaghetti. Did the ancient 

 Romans eat Macaroni and Spaghetti? Probably not. At 

 least, Prof. Richard Engelmann, a famous archaeologist of 

 Berlin, told me that not a word is mentioned in any of the 

 ancient scriptures about them. The Ancients had only 

 Polenta, a kind of grits (like our oatmeal) which they made 

 of wheat or barley. 



Although there was in ancient Italy a great division of 

 labor in other professions, it was not so with milling and 

 baking. The baker ground the grain himself and so we find the 

 mills together with the ovens. The mills have a very peculiar 

 shape. They look like an hour-glass of stone. The upper 

 part of the hour-glass forms the funnel (or millhopper), the 

 lower part rests on a conical projection of the bottom stone. 

 By revolving the hour-glass around the cone the grain is 

 ground. There are also other simple mills consisting only of 

 a hollowed stone in which the grain is coarsely ground with 

 another smaller stone or with a pestle, like in a mortar. 



