244 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



The one most frequently claimed as a wildling is the mono- 

 coccum, but this is best fitted of all the wheats to maintain itself 

 in the wild state, as it thrives in the most forbidding land. 



There is much reason also to consider this one-grained species 

 as the most primitive of all the races, and the one that is prob- 

 ably nearest the original wild plants from which our wheats have 

 been developed by countless generations of cultivation. 



Some authorities are inclined to consider the spelts as having 

 been derived from the true wheats by breeding, but that is 

 hardly likely. The common facts of evolution, as we know 

 them, now indicate that it is easier for a species to change by 

 the loss of a character than by the acquisition of a new part. 1 

 This accords, too, with the well-known fact that the so-called 

 husk corn, when planted, will give a considerable proportion of 

 corn with naked kernels. 2 



While true wheat is nowhere growing wild, we may confi- 

 dently regard the spelts, especially T. monococcum, as repre- 

 senting a primitive stock, . lost so far as botanists go, or else 

 unrecognizable because of great change in either the domesti- 

 cated or the wild species or in both. Facts both botanical and 

 philological, however, point to southeastern Europe and western 

 Asia as the general region in which wheat was developed, some 

 authorities confidently regarding Mesopotamia as the undoubted 

 original home. 



In the midst of all this doubt three facts are clear : first, wheat 

 as we know it does not grow wild ; second, it has been cultivated 

 in substantially its present form for at least five or six thousand 

 years, and probably in some form from the remotest antiquity ; 

 third, it does not readily maintain itself in the wild, so that it 

 has either changed greatly or else its wild progenitor has been 

 greatly altered or never did exist outside some remote and 

 restricted area. 



1 See chapter on Mutation. 



2 Candolle mentions that one sowing gave 225 ears of husk corn and 105 

 of the common form (" Origin of Cultivated Plants," p. 394). 



