CEREAL GRASSES. 25 



perfect flowers, and the central an imperfect one, we get 

 four-rowed barley and its allies. When all the spikelets 

 are perfect, it is six-rowed barley (var. hexastichum). 



Professor Lindley thus describes H. distichum : — "This 

 is the only kind of barley that has been found apparently 

 wild. We have now before us specimens gathered in 

 Mesopotamia, during Colonel Chesney's expedition to 

 the Euphrates, with narrow ears, little more than an 

 inch long, exclusive of the awn, or four and a half inches, 

 awns included ; and others, from the ruins of Persepolis, 

 with ears scarcely so large as starved rye. Both are 

 straw-coloured, but that from Mesopotamia has the 

 glumes much more hairy than the other. The plant is 

 also said to inhabit Tartary. To this species belong all 

 the varieties cultivated under various names ; the H. zeo- 

 criton, sprat or battledore barley, is an undoubted result 

 of domestication. The H. vulgare of Linnseus is a form 

 with the grains in four rows, the naked-eared variety of 

 which is the H. cceleste of some authors." 



The geographical range of barley is much greater than 

 that of wheat. It can bear great extremes of tempera- 

 ture, enduring the scorching suns of Africa arid Central 

 Asia, and the cold of northern Europe and America, even 

 to Siberia and Kamtchatka. It grows rapidly and vigor- 

 ously, and matures its seed in perfection either in the 

 fervid heat of the south or the short-lived summers of 

 the North. 



In times of antiquity it was cultivated for the use of 

 man and domestic animals. In Spain and Barbary two 

 crops of barley are now raised in one season, so when w r e 

 read in Scripture that, at the time of the Exodus, si the 

 barley was in the ear," we conclude that it was the early 

 crop. In those distant ages barley-bread was the chief 



