The Origin of Wheat. 



Primitive man, of course, did not proceed nearly 

 so fast as that. Of the very carHest attempts at cul- 

 tivation of yEgilops, all traces are now lost, but we 

 can gather that its tillage must have continued in 

 some unknown western Asiatic region for some time 

 before the neolithic period ; for in that period we 

 find a rude early form of wheat already considerably 

 developed among the scanty relics of the Swiss lake 

 dwellings. The other cultivated plants by which it 

 is there accompanied, and the nature of the garden 

 weeds which had followed in its wake, point back to 

 Central or Western Asia as the land in which its tillage 

 had first begun. From that region the Swiss lake 

 dwellers brought it with them to their new home 

 among the Alpine valleys. It differed much already 

 from the wild yEgilops in size and stature ; but at 

 the same time it was far from having attained the 

 stately dimensions of our modern corn. The ears 

 found in the lake duellings are shorter and narrower 

 than our own ; the spikelets stand out more hori- 

 zontally, and the grains arc hardly more than half the 

 size of their modern descendants. The same thing is 

 true in analogous ways with all the cultivated fruits 

 or seeds of the stone age : they arc invariably much 

 smaller and poorer than their representatives in exist- 

 ing fields or gardens. I'rom that time to this the 



