250 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



As has been indicated, this is a plant that easily maintains 

 itself in the wild condition. That wild rye has been many times 

 discovered does not admit of a doubt, but, from the fact just 

 stated, this would not be conclusive evidence of its aboriginal state. 



However this may be, according to the best authorities there 

 are no less than five or six closely related species growing wild 

 in western Asia and southeastern Europe, particularly in the 

 neighborhood of the Black and- Caspian seas, leaving no doubt 

 of the identity of its wild relatives and of the approximate region 

 of its early cultivation. 



Rice {Oryza sativa). At last we have a grain of ancient and 

 honorable standing that still exists truly in the wild state, where 

 it flourishes in the marshes of Cochin China. Being an aquatic 

 plant, it more easily maintains itself outside of cultivation than 

 can those species confined to the upland. ^ 



Rice undoubtedly originated in China, where it has been culti- 

 vated at least since 2000 b.c, and whence it spread to India 

 and gradually westward around the world. Candolle asserts, on 

 what he considers good authority, that a thousand years elapsed 

 between its cultivation in Babylon and its introduction into Syria, 

 another two or three hundred before it made its way into Egypt, 

 and it was not until 1468 that it was first cultivated in Italy. Its 

 introduction into the United States is said to date from 1694, 

 when a vessel from Madagascar put into a South Carolina port 

 in distress. From a little sack of rice on board, given to a resi- 

 dent, it rapidly spread over the state and afterward to Louisiana, 

 where its production has rapidly increased since the Civil War. 



The history of this plant attracts attention to Zizania aquatica, 

 the Indian rice or water oats of our own country. This curious 



1 The student must be impressed with the disadvantage under which wild 

 plants, as compared with wild animals, labor in maintaining themselves in the 

 original state. When the haunts of the wild are invaded by man, the animal 

 retreats to other and more remote regions, possibly better than those he has 

 been forced to abandon. The plant, on the other hand, being unable to move, 

 must stay and take the consequences, and, being the prey of both animals and 

 man, it is comparatively easily forced to extinction. 



