151 



Secale cekeale. Common Eye. Plate CXXVI. 



Stem erect. G-lumes and awn rough. Palese smooth. 

 Secale cereale, Willdenow. Generally adopted. 



Only known in the cultivated state, though said by some travellers 

 to have been found wild in the north-western parts of Asia, in the 

 Crimea, and the Island of Candia, in aU of which it was probably 

 cultivated from time immemorial. Varies in height according to soil 

 and situation, but seldom attains more than three feet. The culm or 

 straw differs from that of most other grasses in being solid, or filled 

 with pith, instead of fistula or hollow between the joints. Spike com- 

 pact, four or five inches long. Spikelets with two perfect flowers, 

 which are sessile and distichous, with the rudiment of a third terminal 

 one. Glumes two, nearly opposite, keeled. Lower palea unequal- 

 sided, terminating in a longer or shorter rough awn ; upper one 

 shorter, usually bifid at the summit. Caryopsis hairy at the point. 



Annual. Flowers in June and July. 



Cultivated extensively throughout England in former times. Eye is at 

 present seldom grown by our farmers for the sake of the grain, though, 

 nest to wheat, unquestionably the most nutritious of the European bread- 

 corns. Inferior to barley in the quantity of starch and sugar contained in 

 the seed, it is far richer in nitrogenous matter, the proportion of gluten 

 and albumen being nearly double that found in the latter grain, or 109 

 parts in the 1000 instead of 60 ; that in wheat varying from 200 to 

 250, a circumstance that renders it superior to every other cereal as 

 human food, and which has necessarily led to that increased cultivation 

 that has nearly banished rye from our soU, unless sown as a green 

 crop for cattle and sheep, the seed required for such purpose being 

 mostly imported. In many parts of the continent rye is grown in 

 large quantities as food for the labouring classes especially, and is 

 sometimes sown mixed with wheat ; a custom that once prevailed in 

 this country, previous to the introduction of those improvements in the 

 system of agriculture which have elevated it from an imperfectly prac- 

 tised art to the rank of a science. The two kinds of grain, reaped 

 and ground together, formed a bread known by the name of mesUn, 

 from an obsolete French or Norman French word, mesle, mixed. This 

 bread is highly extolled for its wholesome quality by some old writers 

 on medicine ; and, indeed, the brown bread of the London bakers, 

 more than half a century back from the present time, made of a mix- 

 ture of wheat and rye flours, was an imitation of it. The sowing of the 

 two kinds of corn in the manner above-mentioned, seems to have origi- 

 nated in an unfounded supposition that if one of them failed the other 

 might yield a crop, and thus ensure some return to the farmer in place 

 of disappointing his hopes altogether : rye, however, generally ripens 

 much earlier than wheat, there being at least ten days or a fortnight 

 difference between them in that respect when sown at the same period, 

 a fact that must have been attended occasionally with considerable loss 



