MILLET. 115 



production of rice, millet is successfully cultivated. 

 Sorghum forms a chief dependance of the people in 

 some parts of India through the arid districts of 

 Arabia in Syria, where it has been produced from 

 the earliest periods and in JVubia, whose inhabitants 

 cultivate this almost to the exclusion of every other 

 grain. 



The seeds of Panicum millet are by much the 

 smallest of any of the cereal plants, but the number 

 borne upon each stalk is so exceedingly great as to 

 counterbalance that disadvantage, and to render this 

 equally productive with other of the culmiferous 

 plants : it is to this circumstance that its name, from 

 mille, a thousand, has been ascribed. 



Of this sort there are two modifications, distin- 

 guished by the form of their spike, one being com- 

 posed of a single rachis, while the other is very much 

 branched. The difference of form thus exhibited is 

 of so marked a character that it can scarcely be 

 viewed as a modification brought about by difference 

 of culture. 



Of each of these there arc to be found some species 

 which chiefly exhibit themselves as such by the vary- 

 ing colour of their grains, and by the circumstance 

 of these being either naked or encrusted. 



One kind of millet, the spike of which is com- 

 pact, has been supposed to be a native of the 

 north of Europe, and is commonly known at 

 least in this quarter of the globe as GERMAN MIL- 

 LET, Sitaria germanica. It is thought, however, 

 that this variety was originally imported from 

 India and acclimatized in Germany. Nor does it 

 aflbrd any direct evidence against this opinion, that 

 seeds apparently of the same kind, brought from 

 India, and subjected at once to the same culture, do 

 not perfect their seeds ; since it is well known that 

 the habits of plants may be changed by slow degrees 



