284 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



turning to the capital from the neighboring town of 

 iN'omentum, met the Eobigalian procession by chance, and 

 it is to his pen that we are indebted for an account of the 

 rites which were performed by the priest.' 



Wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, rice, and maize are 

 collectively designated as cereals. It is of interest to 

 note that the word cereal originally meant something per- 

 taining to Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. It is thus 

 clear that when we speak of cereals, we employ a term 

 which was brought into being and shaped into usefulness 

 by the worshipers of the gods and goddesses of Italy some 

 2,500 years ago. 



The besom of science has swept away many of the 

 superstitions of the past, even stretching to high Olympus 

 and removing the gods and goddesses from their seats. 

 When considering the origin of wheat, we no longer think 

 of Osiris and Ceres but seek to guide our steps into the 

 way of truth with light from the lamp of the now thor- 

 oughly well established doctrine of evolution. Our pres- 

 ent biological knowledge leads us to believe that the 

 wheat now in cultivation was formerly derived from one or 

 more species of wild grass-plants which grew somewhere 

 in Asia, and that the first wheat-grower was a man or 

 woman who lived toward the end of the long Stone Age. 



The Palseolithic Period or Older Stone Age was co- 

 incident with the Great Ice Age, and there is no reason 

 to believe that palseolithic man knew anything of agri- 

 culture. The much shorter Neolithic Period or Newer 

 Stone Age was passed through subsequently to the dis- 

 appearance of the ice. The remains of neolithic man seem 

 to prove that the growing of wheat was associated with 

 his development. Mr. Scott Elliott after discussing the 



5 Cf. A. H. E. BuUer, The Fungus Lore of the Greeks and Romans, 

 Transactions of the British Mycological Society, 1914, pp. 30-31. 



