PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 149 



towards civilization, I should weary both you and myself. 

 I will, therefore, now turn to the domesticated plants. 



As the pastoral life was an advance from the existence 

 of the hunter, so agriculture was a step in civilization 

 above the pastoral life. But in order to live by agriculture 

 it was necessary that certain plants should be domesti- 

 cated, so that man, instead of ranging the forests for game 

 or wandering about with his cattle in search of pasturage, 

 should be able to settle in one spot and by means of these 

 plants be able to keep himself, his family, and his animals 

 in plenty and comfort. 



Of these domesticated plants the various kinds of corn 

 are undoubtedly the chief. The original plant from which 

 wheat has been developed is said to be the aegilops, a wild 

 grass which still grows On the French and Italian shores 

 of the Mediterranean. If the seed of this grass be trans- 

 planted to good soil and well tended, after a few years of 

 cultivation it develops into perfect and productive wheat. 

 This transmutation of grass into a cereal was effected by 

 M. Favre, who found that by selecting the most perfectly 

 developed plants of each generation and thus making each 

 crop an advance on the preceding, in 12 generations wheat 

 was evolved. From other plants originally wild like this 

 have come our oats and barley, rye and maize and other 

 varieties. Corn has been used by man for a vast number 

 of years. Many bushels of wheat and some ears of six- 

 rowed barley have been discovered in the pile works of 

 the Stone Age at Wooseedorf and Wangen, in Switzerland. 

 Egypt since historic times has been a great corn-producing 

 country, and was also remarkable for its early advance in 

 civilization, the extreme fertility of the soil enabling a 

 comparatively small number of men to raise abundance of 

 corn for the food of the rest of the population, and so 

 leaving a large number of people to engage in literary 



