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grasses of one kind or other, often belonging to remotely 

 different groups, but almost all indigenous inhabitants of 

 the Central Asian and Mediterranean regions. The mil- 

 lets of India have been developed from wild species 

 closely resembling certain rare English grasses found 

 only in the southern counties ; the wild barleys grow 

 abundantly in many parts of Britain ; and the wild oat, 

 which flourishes in every district of England, is certainly 

 the ancestor of our cultivated oats. But the pedigree 

 of wheat, the most important of all our cereals, is a little 

 more obscure ; it has varied to a greater degree from its 

 humble original than any other known artificial plant. 

 Fortunately, we are still able to recover the steps by 

 which it has been developed from what might at first 

 sight appear to be a very unlikely and ill-endowed ances- 

 tor indeed. 



The English couch-grass, which often proves such a 

 troublesome weed in our own country, is represented 

 around the Mediterranean shores by an allied genus of 

 annual plants known as goat-grass ; and one of these 

 weedy goat-grasses has now been shown with great prob- 

 ability to be the wild form of our cultivated wheat. 

 It is a small dwarfish grass, with very petty seeds, and 

 not nearly so full a spike as the cereals of agriculture ; 

 but it was long ago remarked as closely allied to true 

 wheat, in all essential structural points ; and by constant 

 tillage and selection it has again been made of late years 

 to develop rapidly into a form not unlike that of the 

 poorest and earliest* cultivated wheats. Of course, it 

 cannot be expected that experiments, however skilful, 

 spread over a few years only, would succeed in produc- 

 ing from the wild stock grains equal to those which have 

 been produced by countless generations of unconscious or 

 semi-conscious selection on the part of primeval tillers. 



