BOOK XVIII. XX. Q2-\xii. q6 



but on the other hand in Egypt it is easy to 

 thresh and gives a good yield. Emmer has no beard, 

 nor has common wheat, excepting the kind called 

 Laconian. With these are also to be classed bromos 

 and tragos," entirely foreign grains, resembhng rice 

 imported from the east. Tiphe itself also belongs to 

 the same class — the grain from which a rice is pro- 

 duced in our part of the world. With the Greeks there 

 is also zea, and according to their account that grain 

 and tiphe degenerate and go back to wheat, if they 

 are sown after being ground, though not at once, but 

 two years later.* 



XXI. Nothing is more proHfic than wheat — Nature Fertmty oj 

 having given it this attribute becaase it used to be "^''*'"' 

 her principal means of nourishing man — inasmuch as 



a peck of wheat, given suitable soil hke that of the 

 Byzacium plain in Africa, produces a yield of 150 

 pecks. The deputy governor of that region sent to 

 his late Majesty Augustus — almost incredible <^ as it 

 seems — a parcel of very nearly 400 shoots obtained 

 from a single grain as seed, and there are still in exist- 

 ence despatches relating to the matter. He Hkewise 

 sent to Nero also 300 stalks obtained from one grain. 

 At all events the plains of Lentini and other districts 

 in Sicily, and the whole of Andalusia, and particularly 

 Egypt reproduce at the rate of a hundredfold. The 

 most prohfic kinds of wheat are branched wheaf' and 

 what they call hundred-grain wheat. Also a single 

 beanstalk has before now been found laden with a 

 hundred beans. 



XXII. We have specified sesame and common and Summer 

 Itahan millets as summer grains. Sesame comes f^g"* 

 from India, where it is also used for making oil; the 

 colour of the grain is white. A grain that resembles 



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