'Z P0PULAE ECONOMIC BOTANY. 



than four-fifths of the human race is formed from the small 

 grains of various grasses, which, even if they required no 

 more labour than merely collecting and preparing, would 

 at least enforce industry ; but requiring, as they do, careful 

 cultivation in well-worked soil, it is indeed only with the 

 sweat of the brow that we can eat the bread which is neces- 

 sary to our existence. 



Foremost in the rank of food-products, and especially of 

 those called cereals, stands Wheat, too well known to re- 

 quire any particular description. It is a true grass (be- 

 longing to the Natural Order Graminacea) , but has been 

 so changed by cultivation that we are totally ignorant of its 

 natural state*. Botanists have named it Triticum hybernum, 

 or Triticum vulgare, variety (3 hybernum-, Winter Wheat, — 

 this is the commonest kind of wheat; another, which is 

 almost as well known, is called Triticum vulgare, variety a 

 aslivum, or Summer Wheat. The former is biennial in its 

 habits — that is, it is sown one year and flowers and fruits 



Unless the experiments of M. Fabre maybe relied upon. He states 

 that he found by successive experiments upon the apparently insignifi- 

 cant grass JEgilo})s ovata, that it first sported (as gardeners call it) to 

 J'J. trlticoides, and from that, by successive changes, extending over seve- 

 ral years, it passed to wheat itself, — not so fine as our highly cultivated 

 \ arieties, but nevertheless wheat it was, unmistakeably. 



