178 On the Campus 



to find a place and its sowing is portrayed. Nay, what 

 is true but stranger still : in the debris of the lake-dwell- 

 ings of Switzerland and Austria, some of which are cer- 

 tainly prehistoric, grains of wheat are found in abund- 

 ance, like the existing forms but smaller; so that so far 

 as the record shows wheat is an exceedingly ancient re- 

 sponse to human selection. You have heard of mummy 

 wheat ; that grains found in closed human hands of some 

 old agriculturist, some lover of seeds and their mysterious 

 hold on life you have heard that such seed sown, 

 grew apace and confirmed so far the Egyptian faith in 

 physical immortality. But, alas, the story is but a touch 

 of fiction. There is no mummy wheat, nor has any grain 

 of any kind from such a source been ever known to 

 grow. The Arabs of Egypt have heard the story, and, 

 willing to accommodate the credulity of the tourist, offer 

 mummy wheat to every passer-by. Not seldom the grain 

 is Indian corn sent from the farms of Iowa and Illinois ! 

 Wheat there was in Egypt ere ever Joseph stored the 

 harvests of the fruitful years, but no mummy has brought 

 it living in his dead and withered hand down to this 

 wonder-loving modern world. 



The story of many other grains is not unlike that of 

 wheat. Eesearch finds them in the possession of prehis- 

 toric man; but the original type has vanished. But 

 what do we not owe to those old-time gardeners and 

 farmers who were skillful to select and care for, and 

 finally transmit, these wonderful grasses, enabling you 

 and me to feed upon the finest of the wheat? How 

 strange it is for us, even in imagination, to thus look back 

 into that ancient world, of which otherwise no record 





