PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIE STEMS OR LEAVES. 127 



the latter imported the name li rather than the plant or 

 its cultivation ; but as there is no wild flax in the north 

 of Europe, an ancient people, the Finns, of Turanian 

 origin, introduced the flax into the north before the 

 Aryans. In this case they must have cultivated the 

 annual flaXj-for the perennial variety will not bear the 

 severity of the northern winters; while we know how 

 favourable the climate of Riga is in summer to the culti- 

 vation of the annual flax. Its first introduction into 

 Gaul, Switzerland, and Italy may have been from the 

 south, by the Iberians, and in Finland by the Finns ; and 

 the Aryans may have afterwards diffused those names 

 which were commonest among themselves — that of linum 

 in the south, and of fiahs in the north. Perhaps the 

 Aryans and Finns had brought the annual flax from 

 Asia, which would soon have been substituted for the 

 perennial variety, which is less productive and less 

 adapted to cold countries. It is not known precisely at 

 what epoch the cultivation of the annual flax in Italy 

 took the place of that of the perennial linum angusti- 

 folium, but it must have been before the Christian era ; 

 for Latin authors speak of a well-established cultivation, 

 and Pliny says that the flax was sown in spring and 

 rooted up in the summer.^ Metal implements were not 

 then wanting, and therefore the flax would have been 

 cut if it had been perennial. Moreover, the latter, if 

 sown in spring, would not have ripened till autumn. 



For the same reasons the flax cultivated by the 

 ancient Egyptians must have been an annual. Hitherto 

 neither entire plants nor a great number of capsules have 

 been found in the catacombs of a nature to furnish direct 

 and incontestable proof Unger ^ alone was able to ex- 

 amine a capsule taken from the bricks of a monument, 

 which Leipsius attributes to the thirteenth or fourteenth 

 century before Christ, and he found it more like those 

 of L. usitatissimum than of L. angustifolium. Out of 

 three seeds which Braiin^ saw in the Berlin Museum, 



' . Pliny, bk. xix. o. 1 ; Vere satum (estate vellitur. 

 ' TJnger, Botanische Streifziige, 1866, No. 7, p. 15. 

 * A. Braun, Die Fflanzenreste des Mgyptischen Museums in BerUn, in 

 8vo, 1877, p. 4. 



