PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIE SEEDS, C71 



and remarks that the name of a cereal mentioned in the 

 memoirs of the Emperor Kanghi, which may be sup- 

 posed to be this species, signifies Russian wheat. Now 

 rye, he says, is much cultivated in Siberia. There is no 

 mention of it in Japanese floras. 



The ancient Greeks did not know it. The first 

 author who mentions it in the Roman empire is Pliny,^ 

 who speaks of the secale cultivated at Turin at the 

 foot of the Alps, under the name of Asia. Galen,^ 

 born in A.D. 131, had seen it cultivated in Thrace and 

 Macedonia under the name briza. Its cultivation does 

 not seem ancient, at least in Italy, for no trace of rye 

 has been found in the remains of the lake-dwellings of 

 the north of that country, or of Switzerland and Savoy, 

 even of the age of bronze. Jetteles found remains of rye 

 near Olmutz, together with instruments of bronze, and 

 Heer,^ who saw the specimens, mentions others of the 

 Roman epoch in Switzerland. 



Failing archaeological proofs, European languages show 

 an early knowledge of rye in German, Keltic, and Sla- 

 vonic countries. The principal names, according to 

 Adolphe Pictet,^ belong to the peoples of the north of 

 Europe : Anglo-Saxon, ryge, rig ; Scandinavian, rugr ; 

 Old High German, roggo ; Ancient Slav, rnji, roji ; 

 Polish, rez ; lUyrian, raz, etc. The origin of this name 

 must date, he says, from an epoch previous to the sepa- 

 ration of the Teutons from the Lithuano- Slavs. The 

 word secale of the Latins recurs in a similar form among 

 the Bretons, segal, and the Basques, cekela, zekhalea ; but 

 it is not known whether the Latins borrowed it from the 

 Gauls and Iberians, or whether, conversely, the latter 

 took the name from the Romans. This second hypo- 

 thesis appears to be the more probable of the two, since 

 the Cisalpine Gauls of Plin^^'s time had quite a different 

 name. I also find mentioned a Tartar name, aresch,^ and 

 an Ossete name, syl, sil^ which points to an ancient 

 cultivation to the east of Europe. 



Jr'iiny, Hist., lib. xviii. c. 16. 



* Galen, Be Alimentis, lib. xiii., quoted by Lenz, Bot. de Alien, p. 259. 



* Heer, Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 16. 



* Ad. Pictet, Ori'jines Indo-Europ., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 344. 



* Nemnicli, Lexicon Naturgesch. • Ad. Pictet, uhi supra. 



