68 REPORT—1852. 
through linear-leaved and monocotyledonous plants. In conclusion, he remarked, 
that these views, if substantiated, would aid in giving us the true science of the mor- 
phology of the plant, and in particular show that there is a unity of design in the 
skeleton of the plant, similar to the unity of design which has been discovered in the 
skeleton of the animal frame. Possibly they might also help to determine the di- 
rection of the vital forces as operating in vegetable organisms ; they would certainly 
make us better acquainted with what Humboldt would call the physiognomy of each 
species of plant, and furnish some additional marks to distinguish genera and species, 
and, what was to him especially interesting, enable the student of natural theology 
to make successful use of the plant, to illustrate the order which reigns in the uni- 
verse. 

On the Transmutation of Egilops into Triticum. 
By Major Munro, 39th Regiment, F.L.S. 
The origin of all our domesticated animals is still considered by the most cele- 
brated naturalists to be unknown, and this is the opinion very generally held with 
regard to our principal cereal grains also. The difficulty may possibly have arisen 
from looking for an animal or plant bearing too close a resemblance to their culti- 
vated descendants. Mythology, hitherto considered an amusing dreamy account of 
early history, may come to our aid in this matter also, and iead us, in the fable of 
Ceres and Triptolemus, to Sicily as the birth-place of our much-valued grain, wheat. 
Certain it is that at different periods it has been believed that some species of 
Ggilops is the origin of our wheat, the produce of some of the numerous varieties 
of the cultivated Triticum. It has also been stated, that the inhabitants of the 
neighbourhood of Mount tna used to collect the seed of the gilops ovata which 
grows there wild, as food. It is a small insignificant-looking plant, but from a 
series of specimens produced to the meeting, it does not require any great stretch of 
imagination satisfactorily to trace the gradual alteration the plant assumes in its 
various advances towards the state which is commonly called Tonselle wheat. The 
still greater external change from bearded to smooth wheat, and the very extraordi- 
nary looking forms called Egyptian and Abyssinian wheats (Triticum Polonicum and 
compositum), take place under our own observation daily, especially in cultivating 
wheat in India from English and Egyptian grown seeds. M. Esprit Fabre seems 
most satisfactorily to have proved that both gilops ovata and triaristata pass acci- 
dentally into 4, triticoides, and thence into Triticum. His experiments, as detailed and 
illustrated in a pamphlet edited by M. Felix Dunal, appeared to have been carried 
on most carefully and regularly for twelve years, commencing in 1838. For seven 
years the plants were raised in a garden surrounded by a wall, and for five years as 
a field crop, producing an average return with other wheats grown in the neigh- 
bourhood. M. Fabre had no favourite idea to illustrate and enlarge upon, and no 
object apparently in his experiments but the interests of science, and was so badly 
provided with books, that he had only one, and that certainly a very good one, 
Decandolle’s Flore Francais, He therefore details minutely the gradual change which 
took place after each successive sowing in this remarkable progress of Avgilops ovata, 
about six inches high, with its brittle head, shedding, as soon as ripe, its few, one to 
three, perfect hairy seeds, into good wheat three feet high, producing from each 
lasting head often 100 and upwards perfect, almost smooth seeds, remaining in 
the spikes till removed by the hand of.man. In proof of the correctness of these 
observations, M. Dunal has forwarded a very interesting series of specimens to 
England. Still the fact, it is but right to state, is doubted by some botanists, and 
especially by him who is considered by almost every naturalist as Botanicorum 
facile princeps. The objections appear scarcely sufficiently strong, and the difficulty 
of procuring ripe seeds of 4yilops into England has hitherto prevented some minute 
inquiries into the internal structure of the seeds. In making conclusive experiments 
in cultivation, it will be necessary first to procure the shoot or varieties of 4gilops 
ovata, which is called triticoides, and not simply to cultivate the Mgilops ovata, 
which might go on for years reproducing itself without variation. All gardeners 
in seeking to produce double flowers carefully collect the seed from the best semi- 
double ones. 
Fully persuaded, in conformity to the opinion of most botanists, that Triticum 
