PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 8G9 



less cultivated in antiquity than that with two rows, and 

 considerably less than that with six rows. It has not 

 been found in Egyptian monuments, nor in the lake- 

 dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy. 



Willdenow ^ says that it grows in Sicily and in the 

 south-east of Russia, at Samara, but the modern floras of 

 these two countries do not confirm this. We do not 

 know what species of barley it was that Olivier saw 

 growing wild in Mesopotamia ; consequently the common 

 barley has not yet been found certainly wild. 



The multitude of common names which are attributed 

 to it prove nothing as to its origin, for in most cases it 

 is impossible to know if they are names of barle}^ in 

 general, or of a particular kind of barley cultivated in a 

 given country. 



Six-rowed Barley — Hordeum hexastichon, Linnaeus. 



This was the species most commonly cultivated in 

 antiquity. Not only is it mentioned by Greek authors, 

 but it has also been found in the earliest Egyptian monu- 

 ments,^ and in the remains of the lake-dwellings of 

 Switzerland (age of stone), of Italy, and of Savoy (age 

 of bronze).^ Heer has even distinguished two varieties 

 of the species formerly cultivated in STsdtzerland. One of 

 them answers to the six-rowed barley represented on 

 the medals of Metapontis, a town in the south of Italy, 

 six centuries before Christ. 



According to Roxburgh,* it was the only kind of 

 barley grown in India at the end of the last century. 

 He attributes to it the Sanskrit name yuva, which 

 has become juha in Bengali. Adolphe Pictet^ has care- 

 fully studied the names in Sanskrit and other Indo- 

 European languages which answer to the generic name 



* Willdenow, Species Plant, i. p. 472. 



^ Ungerj Fflanzen des Alien Egyjptens, p. 33; Ein Ziegel der Dashur 

 Pyramide, p. 109. 



' Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlhauten, p. 5, figs. 2 and 3 ; p. 13, fig. 9 ; 

 Flora Bot. Zeitung, 1869, p. 320? de Mortillet, according to Perrin, 

 Etudes prekistoriques sur la Savoie, p. 23 ; Sordelli, Sulle piante della 

 forhiera di Lagozza, p. 33. 



* Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, vol. i. p. 358. 



* Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Europ., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 333. 



2 B 



