518 CEREAL PLANTS. 



Chap. IX. 



with peculiar leaves appeared, it would bo neglected unless the 

 grains of corn were at the same time superior in quality or size. 

 The selection of seed-corn, was strongly recommended 43 in 

 ancient times by Columella and Celsus ; and as Virgil says, — 



"I've seen the largest weds, tho' view'd with care, 



Degenerate, unless tlr industrious hand 



Did yearly cull the largest." 



But whether in ancmnt times selection was methodically pursued 

 we may well doubt, when we hear how laborious the work was 

 found by Le Couteur. kltfamgh the principle of selection is 

 so important, yet the little which man has effected, by incessant 

 efforts 44 during thousands of years, in rendering the plants more 

 productive or the grains more nutritious than they were in the 

 time of the old Egyptians, would seem to speak strongly against 

 its efficacy. But we must not forget that at each successive 

 period the state of agriculture and the quantity of manure sup- 

 plied to the land will have determined the maximum degree 

 of productiveness ; for it would be impossible to cultivate a 

 highly productive variety, unless the land contained a sufficient 

 supply of the necessary chemical elements. 



We now know that man was sufficiently civilized to culti- 

 vate the ground at an immensely remote period ; so that wheat 

 might have been improved long ago up to that standard of ex- 

 cellence which was possible under the then existing state of agri- 

 culture. One small class of facts supports this view of the slow 

 and gradual improvement of our cereals. In the most ancient 

 lake-habitations of Switzerland, when men employed only Hint- 

 tools, the most extensively cultivated wheat was a peculiar kind, 

 with remarkably small ears and grains. 45 " Whilst the grains of 

 the modern forms are in section from seven to eight millimetres in 

 length, the larger grains from the lake-habitations are six, seldom 

 seven, and the smaller ones only four. The ear is thus much 

 narrower, and the spikelets stand out more horizontally, than in 

 our present forms." So again with barley, the most ancient and 

 most extensively cultivated kind had small ears, and the grains 



43 Quoted by Le Couteur, p. 16. bauten,' 1866. The following passage 



44 A. De Candolle, ' Geograph. Bot.,' is quoted from Dr. Christ, in ' Die 

 p < 932, Fauna der Pfahlbauten von Dr. Eiiti- 



45 O. Heer, ' Die Pflanzen der Pfahl- meyer,' 1861, s. 225. 



