134 THE FLORIST AND 



IS THERE POSITIVE PROOF OF THE ORIGIN OF WHEAT FROM 

 A GRASS BELONGING TO A DIFFERENT GENUS ? 



BY L. C. TREVIRANUS. 



The question where those ohjects of cultivation originated which are so 

 indispensable to man in a state of civilization does not, when taken by 

 itself, admit of any general answer ; but considered in a wider extent, can 

 only be answered conditionally. For either the answer is inseparable from 

 the general question as to the development of the human race, and so far 

 lies out of the range of experience, or we must assume that these objects 

 were found by man in a state of nature, and in the condition in which they 

 were found, applied to his uses; or, finally, that they at first existed in a 

 certain form which has been modified by the agency of man, so that the 

 original state is no longer extant, or if so, in such a condition as not to 

 exhibit the transition from the cultivated plant to the parent from which it 

 was derived. The first method of reply holds the question as in itself un- 

 answerable, and in some measure coincides with those views which regard 

 the objects of cultivation, such as the Laurel, the Myrtle, the Vine, the 

 different kinds of corn, &c, as the gifts of the gods, that is, of beings who 

 introduced cultivation into the earth from their unknown habitations. The 

 second answer to the question must have been received unconditionally as 

 the right one, were it clear that our cultivated forms have ever been found 

 wild, or still are found so; that is, whether they have ever lived or still live 

 in any specific locality independently of the agency of man. But the 

 necessary proofs are altogether wanting. 



When Dureau de la Malle would make it probable from historic dates, 

 that the part of Palestine and Syria which borders on Arabia is the parent 

 country of corn, namely, wheat and barley (Ann. de Sc. Nat. ix. 61) ; when 

 Heinzelmann would consider wheat as growing wild in the country of the 

 Baschkirs, and A. Michaux Spelt in the mountains in the north of Hamadan, 

 in Persia (Lamarck, Encyc. Bot. ii. 458), we must bear in mind that, as 

 regards the first, we can place very little reliance upon the accounts of the 

 occurrence of species by persons who were little acquainted with objects of 

 natural history, or upon their description or pictorial illustrations ; and that, 

 in respect of the other instances, a far longer residence than falls to the lot 

 of travelers in general in the countries where they are supposed to have 

 taken their origin is requisite, in order to distinguish the wild state of a 

 plant from such as have merely escaped from cultivation. There remains, 

 then, only in answer of the question, that a typical form of these plants 



