806 DISCUSSION ON WHEAT : 
be interesting to sift the available experimental evidence and perhaps to 
start a new series of experiments on the basis of my propositions. Above 
all, however, it is desirable that the efforts to trace the distribution of the 
primitive wheats and discover new wild forms should be continued. In the 
first place, there can be now no doubt where to look for the latter. The 
statement of the Assyrian historian Berosus that wheat grew wild on the 
banks of the Kuphrates, and Olivier’s observation to the same effect made 
more than 2000 years later, cannot, after Aaronsohn’s discoveries, be treated 
any longer as negligible, especially as Olivier’s location of the place where 
ie found wild wheat associated with wild barley and ‘ Spelt’ is so precise 
that there ought to be no difficulty in visiting and examining it again. 
Another point which I would impress is the necessity of collecting without 
delay good samples of all the wheats—whole plants, as well as grains— 
which are grown in the Old World, particularly in the districts not yet 
much affected by the introduction of modern races. Many of the more 
primitive races are no doubt still in cultivation, and if not secured in 
time they will be lost for ever. The Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor—in fact, 
the whole of the Orient—should be searched, and the same applies to 
Abyssinia, to Central Asia, and China. I have so far not mentioned the 
Chinese wheats, although wheat is grown more extensively in China, par- 
ticularly in the north and west, than is generally understood, and although 
it has been known to the Chinese for a very long time—at so early a period, 
indeed, that Count Solms-Laubach saw in this fact one of the arguments for 
his contention that the wheats were of Central Asiatic origin. Besides making 
systematic collections of the wheats grown at present, it will also be neces- 
sary to search for, preserve, and carefully study every spike, spikelet, or 
grain sample found in the course of excavations of ancient sites, and to 
catalogue, examine, and compare whatever there may exist of old pictorial 
representations of cereals. We shall then, by the concentrated efforts of the 
collector, the botanist, and the archeologist, be in a better position to recon- 
struct the process of evolution which has led from a few wild grasses to the 
vast number of cultivated races which to-day we comprise under the name 
of wheats. This is a process which claims the attention not only of the 
botanist but of all of us who, beyond our professional spheres, are accus- 
tomed to give a thought to the wider and deeper problems of the history of 
civilisation. The evolution of the cereals occupies the foremost place in the 
rise and onward march of agriculture all over the world. That of the 
wheats—with their immediate allies, the barleys and ryes—is especially 
closely associated with the white races; it is like a keystone in their making, 
it runs in their blood. With the ancients the cereals were the gifts of the 
gods. Isis gave wheat and barley to Egypt; as Demeter she took them to 
Greece, as Ceres to Latium. A wreath of wheat ears crowned her head, in 
Egypt as well as in Hellas and Rome. To go to the other end of the old 
Old World wheat area, the Chinese also received it ‘from Heaven,’ or, as 
other legends have it, from their half-mythical Emperor Shen-nung, who 
in the very dawn of Chinese history taught them to till the ground and 
‘vaise the ‘wu ku,’ the five grains. Among them, holding the second place, 
was ‘mai,’ which originally stood for wheat and barley, and later on, 
according to Bretschneider, with or without the qualifying ‘siao’ (little), 
for wheat alone. Thus as the Egyptian myths made Isis introduce wheat 
and barley simultaneously, so in China the ‘mai’ which the Emperor 
Shen-nung sowed covered both. Similarly the Zea the primitive wheat 
of ancient Greece, is etymologically equivalent to the sertic and avedic 
yava, which in another direction gave rise to ‘djau,’ the Persian name 
for barley, while the Latin far, the synonym of Zed, corresponds to the 
Gothic barizeins and Anglo-Saxon bere for barley. This is remarkable, 
and pecomes very significant in the face of Aaronsohn’s and Olivier’s 
