542 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 



At one time a custom prevailed of going about from one friend s 

 house to another, masked, and committing every conceivable, prank. 

 Then the people feasted on blinnies a pancake similar to the English 

 crumpet.&quot; 



In the pancake we have most probably the earliest form of farina 

 ceous food known to the nations which derived their civilization from 

 the basin of the Mediterranean. Among these nations wheat has been 

 in use from a time far beyond the remotest historical period, and to ac 

 count for its introduction myth has been invoked ; but this wheat was 

 cooked without leaven, or was fried in a pan, after the style of the tor 

 tilla still used in Spanish-speaking countries, or of the pancake common 

 among ourselves. Pliny 2 says that there were no bakers known in 

 Rome until nearly six hundred years after the foundation of the city, 

 in the days of the war with Persia; but he perhaps meant the public 

 &quot;bakers authorized by law. The use of wheat and the art of baking 

 bread, as we understand it to-day, were practically unknown to the na 

 tions of northern Europe until within the recent historical period/ 1 



1 Heath, A Hoosier in Russia, p. 109. 

 &quot;Nat. Hist., lib. 18. cap. 28. 



3 Wheat, which is now the bread corn of twelve European nations and is fast supplanting maize in 

 America and several inferior grains in India, was no doubt widely grown in the prehistoric world- 

 The Chinese cultivated it 2700 I!, f , as a gift direct from Heaven ; the Egyptians attributed its origin 

 to Isis and the Greeks to Ceres. A classic account of the distribution of wheat over the primeval 

 world shows that Ceres, having taught her favorite Triptolemus agriculture and the art of bread- 

 making, gave him her chariot, a celestial vehicle which he used in useful travels for the purpose of 

 distributing corn to all nations. 



Ancient monuments show that the cultivation of wheat had been established in Egypt before the 

 invasion of the shepherds, and there is evidence that more productive varieties of wheat have taken 

 the place of one, at least, of the ancient sorts. Innumerable varieties exist of common wheat. Colonel 

 LeCouteur, of Jersey, cultivated 150 varieties: Mr. Darwin mentions a French gentleman who had col 

 lected 322 varieties, and the great firm of French seed merchants, Vilmorin- Andrieux et C&quot;, cultivate 

 about twice as many in their trial ground near 1 aris. In their recent work on Lcs meilleurs bles 

 M. Henry L. de Vilmorin has described sixty-eight varieties of best wheat, which he has classed into 

 seven groups, though these groups can hardly be called distinct species, since M. Henry L. de Vilmorin 

 has crossbred three of them, Triticum vulgare, Triticum turgidum and Triticum durum, and has found 

 the offspring fertile. 



Three small-grained varieties of common wheat were cultivated by the first lake dwellers of Switzer 

 land (time of Trojan war), as well as by the less ancient lake dwellers of western Switzerland anil 

 of Italy, bv the people of Hungary in the stone age, and by the Egyptians, on evidence of a brick of a 

 pyramid in which a grain was embedded and to which the date of 3359 B. C. has been assigned. 



The existence of names for wheat in the most ancient languages confirms this evidence of the antiqu 

 ity of its culture in all the more temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but it seems improbable 

 that wheat has ever been found growing persistently in a wild state, although the fact has often been 

 asserted by poets, travelers, and historians. In the Odyssey, for example, we are told that wheat grew 

 in Sicily without the aid of man, but a blind poet could not have seen this himself, and a botanical 

 fact can hardly be accepted from a writer whose own existence has been contested. Diodorus repeats 

 the tradition that Osiris found wheat and barley growing promiscuously in Palestine, but neither this 

 nor other discoveries of persistent wild wheat seem to us to be credible, seeing that wheat does not 

 appear to be endowed with a power of persistency except under culture. Edinburgh Keview. 



The origin of baking precedes the period of history and is involved in the obscurity of the early 

 ages of the human race. Excavations made in Switzerland gave evidence that the art of making bread 

 was practiced by our prehistoric ancestors as early as the stone period. From the shape of loaves it is 

 thought that no ovens were used at that time, but the dough was rolled into small round cakes and 

 laid on hot stones, being covered with glowing ashes. Bread is mentioned in the book of Genesis, 

 where Abraham, wishing to Entertain three angels, offered to &quot; fetch a morsel of bread.&quot; Baking is 

 again referred to where Sarah has instructions to make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, 

 knead it and make cakes upon the hearth.&quot; Lot entertained two angels by giving them unleavened 



