34 THE SMALL GRAINS 



from other wheat groups that it is most likely a distinct 

 botanical species, this idea being supported by the fact 

 that it will cross with other wheats only with great diffi- 

 culty, though all other subspecies intercross readily. 

 This wheat is native in Servia, Crimea, Caucasus, and 

 Asia Minor. It is at least a very ancient cultivated 

 form. In 1909 Larionov (1910, pp. 7-13) found three 

 wild forms of einkorn white chaff, black chaff, and 

 black-bearded red chaff near Balaklava in southern 

 Crimea. 



39. Antiquity of wheat in China. According to Julien, 

 every year, about the vernal equinox, it has been the 

 custom for the Chinese Emperor, princes, and presidents 

 of boards, to conduct a public ceremony of plowing and 

 sowing five kinds of seed. These are wheat, rice, common 

 millet, proso millet, and soja beans. This ceremony was 

 instituted in the twenty-eighth century B.C. by Emperor 

 Chin-nung, who, according to the Itung Chi or Great 

 Geography of China, is still worshiped in a temple on 

 top of the mountain Po ku Shan, near Lu an Fu, in 

 southern Shansi province. Chinese scholars claim that 

 all these plants, whose seed are used in the ceremony, 

 are native in China. There is not sufficient evidence to 

 establish this claim, but it does appear that wheat culti- 

 vation in China is very ancient. 



40. Present range. The subspecies of wheat have a 

 range of cultivation throughout the world, both as to 

 elevation and latitude, greater than that of any other 

 cereal, and probably greater than that of any other crop, 

 except that barley is grown at slightly higher latitudes 

 and in some instances at a higher elevation. Wheat is 

 now grown successfully in practically the hottest and 

 coldest of civilized countries, in the tropics of the 



