The Origin of Wheat, 133 



V. 



THE ORIGIN OF WHEAT. 



Wheat ranks by descent as a degenerate and de- 

 graded lily. Such in brief is the text which this 

 paper sets out to prove, and which the whole course 

 of evolutionary botany tends cver^'- day more and 

 more fully to confirm. By thus from the very outset 

 placing clearly before our eyes the goal of our argu- 

 ment, we shall be able the better to understand as we 

 go whither each item of the cumulative evidence is 

 really tending. We must endeavour to start with the 

 simplest forms of the great group of plants to which the 

 cereals and the other grasses belong, and we must try 

 to see by what steps this primitive type gave birth, first 

 to the brilliantly coloured lilies, next to the degraded 

 rushes and sedges, and then to the still more degene- 

 rate grasses, from one or other of whose richer grains 

 man has finally developed his wheat, his rice, his 

 millet, and his barley. We shall thus trace through- 

 out the whole pedigree of wheat from the time when 



