50 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



these grasses; all references, however, point to India, and 

 yet Humboldt tells us, that the varieties there found in 

 our day bear unmistakable evidence that they were once 

 cultivated, and have but recently become outcasts. The 

 Spaniards carried wheat to North America; a negro slave 

 of the great Cortes was the first who cultivated it in 

 New Spain, beginning with three grains which he had ac- 

 cidentally found among the rice brought out as provisions 

 for the army. At Quito, they show to this day, in a 

 Franciscan convent, the earthen vessel which had con- 

 tained the first wheat sown there by a monk, a native 

 of Flanders, in front of his convent, after cutting down 

 .the original forest. The great Humboldt says, justly, in 

 connection with this fact : " Would that the names had 

 been preserved, not of those who made the earth desolate 

 by bloody conquests, but of those who intrusted to it first 

 these, its fruits, so early associated with the civilization 

 of mankind." Barley, which Homer mentions as the food 

 of his heroes' horses, has at least this merit, that it is 

 the most widely spread of all the nutritious grasses. It 

 is known from the utmost boundary of culture in Lap- 

 land down to the elevated plains near the equator. 



At a much later period, rye was brought to Europe; 

 at the time of Galenus it found its way through Thracia 

 into Greece, and Pliny speaks of it as having been 

 brought from Tauria by Massilian merchants; in his day 

 it was occasionally met with in the neighborhood of 

 Turin. Serbian Wendes brought it, in the seventh cen- 

 tury to Germany, where Charlemagne at once distinguished 

 its great importance, and wisely encouraged its culture, 



