oG4i ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



Spelt has no name in Sanskrit, nor in any moclern 

 Indian languages, nor in Persian/ and therefore, of course, 

 none in Chinese. European names, on the contrary, are 

 numerous, and bear witness to an ancient cultivation, 

 especially in the east of Europe. Spelta in Saxon, whence 

 the English name, and the French, epcautre ; Dinlcel in 

 modern German, orkiss in Polish, pohla in Russian,^ are 

 names which seem to come from very different roots. 

 In the south of Europe the names are }-arer. There is 

 a Spanish one, however, of Asturia, escandia^ but I know 

 of none in Basque. 



History, and especially philology, point to an origin 

 in eastern temperate Europe and the neighbouring 

 countries of Asia. We have to discover whether the 

 plant has been found wild. 



Olivier,* in a passage already quoted, says that he 

 several times found it in Mesopotamia, in pai'ticular 

 upon the light bank of the Euphrates, north of Anah, in 

 places unlit for cultivation. Another botanist, Andre 

 Michaux, saw it in 1783, near Hamadan, a town in the 

 temperate region of Persia. Dureau de la Mails says 

 that he sent some grains of it to Bosc, who sowed them 

 at Paris and obtained the common spelt ; but this seems 

 to me doubtful, for Lamarck, in 178G, and Bosc , himself, 

 in the Bictionnaire d'AgincultiLve, article Epeautre 

 (spelt), published in 1809, sa3's not a word of this. The 

 herbariums of the Paris Museum contain no specimens 

 of the cereals mentioned by Olivier. 



There is, as we have seen, much uncertainty as to 

 the origin of the species as a wild plant. This leads me 

 to attribute more importance to the hj'pothesis that 

 spelt is derived by cultivation from the common wheat, 

 or from an intermediate form at some not very early 

 prehistoric time. The experiments of H. Yilmorin^ 

 support this theory, for cross fertilizations of the spelt 



' A(L Pictet, Orij. Indo-Europ., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 348. 

 ' Afl. Pictet, ihid. ; Nemnicli, Lexicon. 



* Willkomtn and Lange, Prodr. Fl. ni<p., L p. 107. 



* Olivier, Voyage, 18u7, vol. iii. p. -460. 



* Lam-irck, Diet. EncycL, ii. p. 560. 

 H. Vilmoiin, Bull. Soc. But. de France, ISSl, p. 60S. 



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