PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 8G7 



Aclmittincj these facts, T. raonococcuin is a native of 

 Servia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and as the attempts to 

 cross it Y\dth other spelts or wheats have not been 

 successful, it is rightly termed a species in the Linnajan 

 sense. 



The separation of wheat with free grains from spelt 

 must have taken place before all history, perhaps before 

 the beginning of agriculture. Wheat must have appeared 

 first in Asia, and then spelt, probably in Eastern Europe 

 and Anatolia. Lastly, among spelts T. Tiionococcuni 

 seems to be the most ancient form, from which the others 

 have gradually developed in several thousand years of 

 cultivation and selection. 



Two-rowed Barley Hordeum distichon, Linnseus. 



Barley is among the most ancient of cultivated 

 plants. As all its forms resemble each other in nature 

 and uses, we must not expect to find in ancient authors 

 and in common names that precision which would enal)]e 

 us to recognize the species admitted by botanists. In 

 many cases the name barley has been taken in a vague 

 or generic sense. This is a difficulty which we must 

 take into account. Fur instance, the expression of the 

 Old Testament, of Berosus, of Moses of Chorene, 

 Pausanias, Marco Polo, and moi-e recently of Olivier, 

 indicating "wild and cultivated barley" in a given 

 country, prove nothing, because we do not know to 

 which species they refer. There is the same obscurity 

 in China. Dr. Bretschneider says^ that, according to 

 a work published in the year a.d. 100, the Chinese 

 cultivated barley, but he does not specify the kind. At 

 the extreme west of the old world the Guanchos also 

 cultivated a barley, of which we know the name but not 

 the species. 



The common variety of the two-rowed barley, in 

 which the husk remains attached to the ripened grain, 

 has been found wild in Western Asia, in AraVjia Petrea,^ 



of which lie saw several specimens, is, he thinks, the same as T, 

 nionococcum. 



' Bretschneider, On the Stiicly, etc., p. 8. 



* A specimen determined by Keuter in Boissier's Herbarium. 



