124 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



lead me to believe that two or three species of differenl 

 origin, confounded by most authors under the name oi 

 LinumusitatissimwritViQYG formerly cultivated in different 

 countries, without imitation or communication the one 

 with the other. ... I am very doubtful whether the 

 species cultivated by the ancient Egyptians was the 

 species indigenous in Russia and in Siberia." 



My conjectures were confirmed ten years later by a 

 very curious discovery made by Oswald Heer. The lake- 

 dwellers of Eastern Switzerland, at a time when they only 

 used stone implements, and did not know the use of hemp, 

 cultivated and wove a flax which is not our common 

 annual flax, but the perennial flax called Linum angusti- 

 folium, which is wild south of the Alps. This is shown 

 by the examination of the capsules, seeds, and especially 

 of the lower part of a plant carefully extracted from the 

 sediment at Robenhausen. 1 The illustration published 

 by Heer shows distinctly a root surmounted by from two 

 to four stems after the manner of perennial plants. The 

 stems had been cut, whereas our common flax is plucked 

 up by the roots, another proof of the persistent nature 

 of the plant. With the remains of the Robenhausen flax 

 some grains of Silene cretica were found, a species 

 which is also foreign to Switzerland, and abundant in 

 Italy in the fields of flax. 2 Hence Heer concluded that 

 the Swiss lake-dwellers imported the seeds of the Italian 

 flax. This was apparently the case, unless we suppose 

 that the climate of Switzerland at that time differed 

 from that of our own epoch, for the perennial flax would 

 not at the present day survive the winters of Eastern 

 Switzerland. 3 Heer's opinion is supported by the 

 surprising fact that flax has not been found among the 

 remains of the lake-dwellings of Laybach and Mondsee 



1 Heer, Die Pfianzen der Pfahlbauten, 8vo pamphlet, Ziirich, 1865, 

 p. 35 ; Ueber den Flachs und die Flachskultur in Alterthum, pamphlet in 

 8vo, Zurich, 1872. 



2 Bertotoni, Fl. Ital., iv. p. 612. 



8 We have seen that flax is found towards the north-west of Europe, 

 but not immediately north of the Alps. Perhaps the climate of Switzer- 

 land was fonnerly more equable than it is now, with more snow to 

 shelter perennial plants. 



