242 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 
of the prairie, are excellent pasture ; indeed, most pastures, culti- 
vated or native, consist largely of true grasses with a more or 
less slight admixture of legumes. 
Many of the true grasses are entirely unsuited to the uses of 
man. The seeds are too few or too small for grain, or the stems 
too coarse, too harsh, or too small for either hay or pasture. Of 
course such species have never been domesticated ; indeed, but 
a small proportion are suited to our use, as we fully realize when 
we remember that the grass family numbers more species than 
any other known to botany. 
Wheat. This widespread species is the greatest single food 
for man, and was, without doubt, one of the very first plants to 
be brought out of the wild and cultivated, as it certainly has 
been from the greatest antiquity. A small-grained variety has 
been discovered among the remains of the lake dwellers 
of Switzerland, dating from the early stone age of Europe — 
contemporaneous certainly with the Trojan War about 1260 B.c., 
and perhaps much earlier. The same kind of grain has been 
found in the pyramids of Egypt, dating back more than three 
thousand years before Christ, and the Chinese are known to 
have cultivated this “ gift direct from Heaven” fully as early 
as 2700 B.C. 
Names for wheat are various and widespread in many lan- 
guages, showing again, and on philological grounds, that its 
cultivation dates from antiquity. The Egyptians called it 07, 
the Hebrews, ch7ttah, the Chinese, waz; in Sanskrit it was 
sumana and godhuma,; and in Basque, okhava.! All this was 
so long ago that it is now impossible to trace our wheat back 
to its original wild form. Though it covers nearly all the culti- 
vated lands of the world and exists in many varieties both red 
and white, bearded and plain, there is growing nowhere on 
earth any known plant sufficiently near to wheat to be regarded 
with certainty as the original. Wheat exists now in four well- 
marked species : 
1“ Origin of Cultivated Plants,” p. 356. 
