CULTIVATED GRAINS AND GRASSES 253 



italicum of Linnaeus, so commonly raised for hay), and to the 

 true or broom-corn millet (Panicum miliaceum). These last 

 two are the millets of literature, and it is somewhat difficult to 

 keep them separated. 



Millet has been cultivated as a food plant from great antiquity, 

 at least two .species being found common in the remains of the 

 oldest lake dwellers, which, it will be remembered, were in the 

 stone age. S. italic a is probably one of the five seeds sown by 

 the Chinese emperor at the annual public ceremony instituted 

 some 2700 B.C., in which he plows a furrow before the people 

 and scatters the five most important seeds therein, thus giving 

 public testimony and the highest official endorsement to the 

 importance of agriculture. 



This Italian millet (S. italica) is the millet of ancient China, 

 which is almost certainly native in southeastern Asia, where its 

 related species abound, and whence it must have made its way 

 to Switzerland by a northern rather than by a southern route, as 

 it was unknown in Syria ; unless, indeed, it had a double origin, 

 as is not at all improbable when we compare with it our common 

 and abundant foxtail grass, the nearly related Setaria viridis, 

 which could readily be made into a valuable grain-bearing grass. 



The other true millet was also known to the lake dwellers, and 

 from all accounts seems to have been native in southwestern 

 Asia, possibly in the Egyptian side of Arabia. 



Buckwheat (Polygonum fagopyrum). This useful grain is men- 

 tioned here quite out of its place, for it is in no way related to the 

 grasses. It is a relative of the smartweeds, which, together with 

 still closer relatives, grow freely over the northern United States. 



The original of our common buckwheat grows wild in Man- 

 churia, on the banks of the Amur River, and two or three related 

 but inferior species, such as the Tartary buckwheat, are wild in 

 Tartary and Siberia. From here it made its way into Europe, 

 following the former species which had been introduced by way 

 of Tartary and Russia during the Middle Ages (about 1400), 

 under the name of Saracen wheat, a name that long confused 



