PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR SEEDS. 355 



Egyptians or Greeks speak of its origin, they attribute it 

 to mythical personages, Isis, Ceres, Triptolemus.^ The 

 earliest lake-dwellings of Western Switzerland cultivated 

 a small-grained wheat, which Heer^ has carefuUy 

 described and figured under the name Triticum vulgare 

 antiquorum. From various facts, taken collectively, we 

 gather that the first lake-dwellers of Robenhausen were 

 at least contemporary with the Trojan war, and perhaps 

 earlier. The cultivation of their wheat persisted in 

 Switzerland until the Roman conquest, as we see from 

 specimens found at Buchs. Regazzoni also found it in 

 the rubbish-heaps of the lake-dwellers of Varese, and 

 Sordelli in those of Lagozza in Lombardy.^ Unger found 

 the same form in a brick of the pyramid of Dashur, 

 Egypt, to which he assigns a date, 3359 B.C. (Unger, Bot. 

 Streifzugej vii. ; Ein Ziegel, etc., p. 9). Another variety 

 (Tmticwm vulgare compaduni muticwni, Heer) was less 

 common in Switzerland in the earliest stone age, but it 

 has been more often found among the less ancient lake- 

 dwellers of Western Switzerland and of Italy.* A third 

 intermediate variety has been discovered at Aggtelek in 

 Hungary, cultivated in the stone age.^ None of these is 

 identical with the wheat now cultivated, as more profitable 

 varieties have taken their place. 



The Chinese, who grew wheat 2700 B.C., considered it 

 a gift direct from heaven.^ In the annual ceremony of 

 sowing five kinds of seed, instituted by the Emperor 

 Shen-nung or Chin-nong, wheat is one species, the others 

 being rice, sorghum, Setaria italica, and soy. 



The existence of difterent names for wheat in the most 

 ancient languages confirms the belief in a great antiquity 



' These questions have been discussed with learning and judgment by 

 four authors : Link, Ueber die dltere Geschichte der Getreide Arten, in 

 Ahhandl. der Berlin Akad., 1816, vol. xvii. p. 122 ; 1826, p. 67 ; and in 

 Die Urivelt und das Alterthum, 2nd edit., Berlin, 1834, p. 399 ; Heynier, 

 Economie des Celtes et des Germains, 1818, p. 417 ; Dureau de la Malle, 

 Ann. des Sciences Nat., vol. ix. 1826 ; and Loiseleur Deslongchamps, 

 Con.'^id. sur les Cereales, 1812, part i. p. 52. 



* Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 13, pi. 1, figs. 14-18. 

 3 Sordelli, Sulle piayite delta torbiera di Lagozza^ p. 31< 



* Heer, ibid. ; Sordelli, ibid. * Nyari, quoted by Sordelli, ibid. 



* Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 7 and 8. 



