CULTIVATED GRAINS AND GRASSES 245 



Totally aside from all this, however, the student should under- 

 stand that there are still growing wild a number of closely allied 

 species belonging to the same genus of heavy-grained, wheatlike 

 plants. One of the most conspicuous of these is the common 

 quack grass, Tritiaim repens, which maintains itself by its running 

 rootstock, independent of its seeding, and is therefore a trouble- 

 some weed ; another is the awned wheat grass, Tritiaim canimim, 

 which is, along with several other species, indigenous to northern 

 latitudes. It will be seen, therefore, that taking the world over 

 there is no dearth of relatives of the wheat kind, not only in 

 cultivation but also in the wild, nor should we expect at this 

 date to find anywhere in nature species identical with strains 

 that have been cultivated and selected for more than a hundred 

 generations of man. 



Barley. This, too, is one of the most ancient of cultivated 

 plants, coming down to our own day in three distant races, 

 recognized as species by the botanists : viz. the two-rowed, 

 Hordeum distichon ; the common or four-rowed, Hordeum 

 vulgare ; and the six-rowed, Hordeum hexastichon, the most 

 commonly cultivated in antiquity. 



The two-rowed barley has been found wild in western Asia 

 " from the Red Sea to the Caucasus and the Caspian," ^ though 

 whether feral or truly aboriginal cannot of course be told. This 

 barley has not been found in Egyptian monuments, but has been 

 found among the remains of the lake dwellers of Switzerland 

 before their use of metals, though the six-rowed variety seems 

 to have been more commonly cultivated then. 



The common four-rowed barley is said to have been seen 

 growing wild in Mesopotamia, but it has been found neither in 

 Egyptian monuments nor in the lake dwellings. 



On the other hand, the six-rowed barley was well known among 

 the ancients, being abundant in the lake dwellings of the early 

 stone age and in the earliest Egyptian monuments, as well as in 

 Italy during its bronze age. It is not known in the wild state. 

 ^ " Origin of Cultivated Plants," p. 368. 



