ON THE MIGRATION OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 323 
tinct, independent languages, we find two different names for this corn, 
it being cruineached for the first, and gwenith for the last. The tri igo 
of the Spanish and Portuguese is but a corruption of the triticum of 
the Latin; while the French froment and the Italian frumento are 
taken from a synonym of the same language. But in the Basque, 
Which, according to competent judges, differs not only from all other 
European languages, but from all other tongues whatever, ancient 
or modern, we have two names for wheat wholly different from 
those of any other tongue, namely garia and ocava. Having al- 
luded to this singular language, the Basque, I think the names of 
cultivated plants in it may be safely referred to as evidence of the 
comparative antiquity of their culture by the people speaking it. 
Thus the names for wheat, barley, and oats, are purely Basque, 
while those for rye (cecalea), for rice (avvoza), for maize a 
and for the bean (baba) are Spanish. The inference is tha 
first-named plants were immemorially cultivated by the sey tit 
and the last only introduced into their country after the Roman con- 
quest of Spain; indeed, after the Spanish language had assumed its 
present form. 
If we look into the Oriental languages, we shall find in them evi- 
dence of the same tendency. In Sanskrit the name for Wheat is go- 
dhum, and in Persian gandum, essentially the same word; but, as the 
people who spoke the Sanskrit language are believed to have emanated 
from a country forming part of Persia, it is not difficult to account for 
the agreement in this case. In Hindi the name is gehun, which seems 
to be an original word. In the Tamil we have the Sanskrit word in 
the corrupt form of gudumai; but the people speaking this language 
occupy the extreme southern part of India, within from eight to twelve 
degrees of the equator, and where wheat will only bear fruit in a few 
elevated tracts; and hence, as an exotic, it bears a foreign name. In 
Turkish the name of wheat, daghdoi, is a native word. In Arabic we 
have two original and unborrowed ones, antah and Jar. From this, 
so far as etymology can be trusted, we infer that this corn is of in- 
digenous culture both in the parent land of the Turks and in Arabia, 
In Java, within seven degrees of the equator, wheat will only yield 
grain at an elevation of 5000 feet above the sea-level, and here it is 
sometimes called by its Portuguese name of £7igo, and sometimes by its 
Persian name of gandum,—pointing clearly enough to the ae who 
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