CULTIVATED GRAINS AND GRASSES 245 
Totally aside from all this, however, the student should under- 
stand that there are still growing wild a number of closely allied 
species belonging to the same genus of heavy-grained, wheatlike 
plants. One of the most conspicuous of these is the common 
quack grass, 777ticuwm repens, which maintains itself by its running 
rootstock, independent of its seeding, and is therefore a trouble- 
some weed ; another is the awned wheat grass, 77?tecwm caninum, 
which is, along with several other species, indigenous to northern 
latitudes. It will be seen, therefore, that taking the world over 
there is no dearth of relatives of the wheat kind, not only in 
cultivation but also in the wild, nor should we expect at this 
date to find anywhere in nature species identical with strains 
that have been cultivated and selected for more than a hundred 
generations of man. 
Barley. This, too, is one of the most ancient of cultivated 
plants, coming down to our own day in three distant races, 
recognized as species by the botanists: viz. the two-rowed, 
Hordeum distichon ; the common or four-rowed, Hordeum 
vulgare; and the six-rowed, Hordeum hexastichon, the most 
commonly cultivated in antiquity. 
The two-rowed barley has been found wild in western Asia 
‘from the Red Sea to the Caucasus and the Caspian,” ! though 
whether feral or truly aboriginal cannot of course be told. This 
barley has not been found in Egyptian monuments, but has been 
found among the remains of the lake dwellers of Switzerland 
before their use of metals, though the six-rowed variety seems 
to have been more commonly cultivated then. 
The common four-rowed barley is said to have been seen 
growing wild in Mesopotamia, but it has been found neither in 
Egyptian monuments nor in the lake dwellings. 
On the other hand, the six-rowed barley was well known among 
the ancients, being abundant in the lake dwellings of the early 
stone age and in the earliest Egyptian monuments, as well as in 
Italy during its bronze age. It is not known in the wild state. 
1 Origin of Cultivated Plants,” p. 368. 
