143 



heavy, in allusion to the character of bread made from the corn ; such 

 bread was much used among the ancient Eomans as food for their 

 soldiery, and others requiring great strength and muscular endurance; 

 hence, indeed, their prize-fighters, or gladiators, were sometimes 

 termed Hordearii, or barley-eaters. 



The inflorescence of Hordewm is rather peculiar, inasmuch as the 

 greater number of the flowers composing it are only rudimentary, and, 

 in many instances, the glumes of the three clustered spikelets are 

 developed in the form of bristles, as so many appendages to the solitary 

 fertile flower. 



An exception to the above generic character exists in one division of 

 the cultivated barleys, in which the central flower of each spikelet is 

 almost constantly perfect or fertile ; when, as the clusters grow alter- 

 nately on opposite sides of the rachis, there are six rows of grain 

 along each ear, which has therefore a more or less cylindrical out- 

 line, while, if the central spikelet of the clusters' is alone fertile, the 

 grains form two opposite rows rendering the ear flat. Our figures 

 of the cereal barleys furnish examples of the two forms, as Hordeum 

 distichum, two-rowed barley, and Hordeum hexasiichum, six-rowed 

 barley. In confining our illustrations to these two, it is not intended to 

 insist upon the fact of only two such species existing ; but that such 

 is the belief of the writer, though others recognise six, or even a 

 greater number, among the many varieties of this useful corn under 

 cultivation in different parts of the world. Plants that have, from 

 time immemorial, been under the constant care of man, and which are 

 only known to him as dependents upon his skill and reiterated super- 

 intendence, are less amenable to the assumed rules of arrangement 

 than those that, under the government of nature, retain through count- 

 less ages the characters first impressed upon them. The constant 

 tendency of human art, even in its rudest efforts, is to change that 

 which it operates upon, and this is the source of all the uncertainty 

 attending the history of almost every cultivated plant. There is even 

 much reason for concluding that our two assumed or admitted species 

 of barley are merely altered forms of the same grass. 



HoEDEDM DISTICHUM. Common cultivated Barley. Summer Barley. 

 Plate CXXI. Fig. 1. 



Spike linear, flat. Lateral flowers sterile, not awned ; fertile flowers 

 forming two opposite rows, awned. Awns nearly parallel with the 

 spike. Palese adhering to the fruit. 



Hordeum distichum, Linncms. Willdenow. Generally adopted. 



The native country of the common barley is unknown, though 

 several travellers have testified to finding it wild in difTerent parts of 

 northern and western Asia, as in Tartary, and, more recently. Colonel 

 Chesney in Mesopotamia, upon the banks of the Euphrates ; it should 

 be remembered that in these lands it has been under cultivation from 



