242 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



of the prairie, are excellent pasture ; indeed, most pastures, culti- 

 vated or native, consist largely of true grasses with a more or 

 less slight admixture of legumes. 



Many of the true grasses are entirely unsuited to the uses of 

 man. The seeds are too few or too small for grain, or the stems 

 too coarse, too harsh, or too small for either hay or pasture. Of 

 course such species have never been domesticated ; indeed, but 

 a small proportion are suited to our use, as we fully realize when 

 we remember that the grass family numbers more species than 

 any other known to botany. 



Wheat. This widespread species is the greatest single food 

 for man, and was, without doubt, one of the very first plants to 

 be brought out of the wild and cultivated^ as it certainly has 

 been from the greatest antiquity. A small-grained variety has 

 been discovered among the remains of the lake dwellers 

 of Switzerland, dating from the early stone age of Europe — 

 contemporaneous certainly with the Trojan War about 1 200 b.c, 

 and perhaps much earlier. The same kind of grain has been 

 found in the pyramids of Egypt, dating back more than three 

 thousand years before Christ, and the Chinese are known to 

 have cultivated this " gift direct from Heaven " fully as early 

 as 2700 B.C. 



Names for wheat are various and widespread in many lan- 

 guages, showing again, and on philological grounds, that its 

 cultivation dates from antiquity. The Egyptians called it br ; 

 the Hebrews, chittah; the Chinese, mai ; in Sanskrit it was 

 sumana and godhuma; and in Basque, okhaya} All this was 

 so long ago that it is now impossible to trace our wheat back 

 to its original wild form. Though it covers nearly all the culti- 

 vated lands of the world and exists in many varieties both red 

 and white, bearded and plain, there is growing nowhere on 

 earth any known plant sufficiently near to wheat to be regarded 

 with certainty as the original. Wheat exists now in four well- 

 marked species : 



1 " Origin of Cultivated Plants," p. 356. 



