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The World's Commercial Products 



circumstances are interesting when 

 taken in conjunction with the fact that 

 rye is a comparatively " constant " 

 plant, there being but few varieties, a 

 point in which it strikingly differs from 

 most other cereals. 



In Great Britain rye is chiefly grown \ / 

 as a forage crop when it is cultivated 

 at all, but the quantity raised is very 

 small. In Russia, however, rye is by 

 far the most important cereal, and 

 immense quantities are raised in Scan- 

 dinavia and northern Germany, where 

 rye or black bread is so important an 

 article of food. 



The annual production of rye in 

 Russia is greater than in any other 

 country, and the average quantity 

 raised, namely, about 650,000,000 

 bushels, is nearly twice the average 

 annual wheat crop. The distribution 

 of the area devoted to rye cultivation 

 is exactly the reverse of that given over to barley, for while the latter cereal, as stated above, 

 is grown chiefly in the northern and southern districts, rye is principally cultivated in central 

 Russia, where barley is seldom met with. The soil of the northern and eastern districts is 

 peculiarly well suited to rye, and the Government of Vyatka takes first rank in production, the 

 annual crop averaging about 45,000,000 bushels. Practically all the rye grown by the 

 Russian peasants is sown in the autumn, but in Siberia, especially in the Tomsk and Tobolsk 

 governments, a large part of the seed is spring sown. The peasants to a great extent still 

 adopt very primitive methods of cultivation, and the seed is usually sown by hand, covered 

 with a simple harrow, and, when ripe, generally harvested with sickles. 



EXPORTING CORN FROM ODESSA 



OATS 



Oats (Avena sativa) have never been found truly wild, and it is a matter of considerable 

 difficulty to determine upon any locality as their original home, while attempts to identify 

 a particular species, as the parent form from which the modern varieties have sprung, have 

 signally failed. This state of affairs is due in no small measure to the readiness with which 

 cultivated oats establish themselves upon waste ground, often persisting in such a way as to 

 appear wild. For this reason De Candolle, in his " Origin of Cultivated Plants," throws con- 

 siderable doubt upon the reputed existence of truly wild oats in Persia and the Sinaitic penin- 

 sula ; though he admits that the more frequent occurrence of the semi-wild or naturalised 

 condition in the Austrian states, from Dalmatia to Transylvania, lends additional support to 

 the theory, advanced upon philological and historical grounds, that the probable home of the 

 oat was in the temperate countries of eastern Europe, and in Tartary. A curious opinion, 

 said to have been based upon certain statements of the navigator Anson, which met with 

 considerable support during the eighteenth century, was to the effect that the oat was originally 

 obtained from the famous island of Juan Fernandez, but unfortunately for this view oats have 

 been found in the Swiss Lake Dwellings. Further, from historical records it is known that the 

 cereal was cultivated in very early times to the north of Italy and Greece, and in the face of 



