286 ESSAYS ON "WHEAT 



IV. 'Kdmicke's Discovery in a Herbarium 



Komicke published his great work on cereals in the 

 year 1885. In 1873, when he was preparing the notes 

 for his manuscript, he was looking through the pressed 

 specimens of grasses preserved in the herbarium of the 

 National Museum at Vienna. On examining a sheet of 

 wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) which Kotschy had 

 gathered in 1855 at Rasheyya, on the northwestern side 

 of Mount Hermon in Palestine, his eye was attracted to the 

 ear of a graminiferous plant which he at once recognized 

 as a species of wild wheat closely resembling the cultivated 

 wheat known as emmer. Curiously enough, he forgot to 

 mention the wild wheat in his book on cereals published 

 twelve years later ; and it was not until 1889, at a meeting 

 of the Society of the Lower Rhine and Westphalia, that 

 he reported his discovery to the scientific world. He 

 then named Kotschy's plant Triticum vvlgare dicoccoides 

 and declared that it was the prototype of our cultivated 

 wheat. For some years afterwards he repeatedly referred 

 to the wild Triticum and urged botanists who went to the 

 region of Mount Hermon to seek for it. He even en- 

 deavored to induce the scientific academies of Vienna 

 and Berlin to organize an expedition to Palestine to find 

 the plant which he felt to be of so much interest ; but his 

 efforts were all in vain.* 



V. Rediscovery of the Wild Wheat by Aaronsohn 



In 1902, Aaron Aaronsohn, Director of the Jewish 

 Agricultural Experiment Station at Haifa in Palestine, 

 made a visit to Berlin and whilst there Professors Ascher- 

 son, Schweinfurth, and Warburg called his attention to 

 the importance, from a theoretical point of view, of finding 



8 A. Aaronsohn, loo. cit., p. 37. 



