368 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



near Mount Sinai, 1 in the ruins of Persepolis, 2 near 

 the Caspian Sea, 3 between Lenkoran and Baku, in 

 the desert of Chirvan and Awhasia, to the south of the 

 Caucasus, 4 and in Turcomania. 5 No author mentions it 

 in Greece, Egypt, or to the east of Persia. Willdenow 6 

 indicates it at Samara, in the south-east of Russia ; but 

 more recent authors do not confirm this. Its modern 

 area is, therefore, from the Red Sea to the Cauca sus and 

 the Caspian Sea. 



Hence this barley should be one of the forms 

 cultivated by Semitic and Turanian peoples. Yet it 

 has not been found in Egyptian monuments. It seems 

 that the Aryans must have known it, but I find no proof 

 in vernacular names or in history. 



Theophrastus 7 speaks of the two-rowed barley. The 

 lake-dwellers of Eastern Switzerland cultivated it before 

 they possessed metals, 8 but the six-rowed barley was 

 more common among them. 



The variety in which the grain is bare at maturity 

 (H. distichon nvidum, Linnaeus), which in France has all 

 sorts of absurd names, orge a cafe, orge du Perou (coffee 

 barley, Peruvian barley), has never been found wild. 



The fan-shaped barley (Hordeum Zeocriton, Linnaeus) 

 seems to me to be a cultivated form of the two-rowed 

 barley. It is not known in a wild state, nor has it been 

 found in Egyptian monuments, nor the lake-dwellings of 

 Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy. 



Common Barley Hordeum vulgar e, Linnaeus. 



The common barley with four rows of grain is 

 mentioned by Theophrastus, 9 but it seems to have been 



1 Figari and de Notaris, Agrostologies ^gypt. Fragm., p. 18. 

 8 A very starved plant gathered by Kotschy, No. 290, of which I 

 possess a specimen. Boissier terms it H. distichon, varietas. 



3 C. A. Meyer, Verzeichniss, p. 26, from specimens seen also by 

 Ledebour, Fl. Ross., iv. p. 327. 



4 Ledebonr, ibid. 



6 Eegel, Descr. Plant., Nov., 1881, fasc. 8, p. 37. 



6 Willdenow, Sp Plant., i. p. 473. 



7 Theophrastus, Hist. Plant., lib. viii. cap. 4. 



8 Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 13; Messicommer, Flora Boi. 

 Zeitung, 1869, p. 320. 



9 Theophrastus, Hist., lib. viii. cap. 4. 



