42 AGRICULTURAL AND BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS IN PALESTINE. 



Emmer has been found m the lake dwellings of Wangen and 

 Robenhausen, which date back to the end of the neolithic epoch, a 

 little before the bronze age. This, therefore, is the only species 

 which has been cultivated from the very beginning of civilization, 

 and we are justified in asserting it to be the progenitor of our culti- 

 vated wheats. This explains why it was so desirable to find the 

 wild form. 



REDISCOVERY OF WILD EMMER IN PALESTINE AND SYRIA. 



This was the state of the question when, in the autumn of 1902, 

 I was in Berlin. Professors Ascherson, Schweinfurth, and Warburg 

 at that time called my attention to the importance, from a theoretical 

 point of view, of finding this wild form of emmer. Then only the 

 theoretical phase of the question was under consideration. As I was 

 then living in Palestine, not far from Mount Hermon, I decided to 

 undertake an investigation of this subject. My ambition was simply 

 to rediscover Kotschy's plant, which had definitely taken the name of 

 Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides. This name was necessarily given to 

 it in order to conform to the rules of nomenclature; and thus we 

 have, strangely enough, the w T ild type taking the name of a variety 

 while the cultivated type bears the name of a species. I had the 

 good fortune to rediscover this plant, and I have studied it since 1906. 



In June, 1904, as I was in upper Galilee preparing a geognostic 

 map of the region, I went as far as the foot of Mount Hermon look- 

 ing for Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides^ but failed to discover it. I 

 was not very persistent in my search because I had very little hope of 

 success. I knew that both the late G. Post, the author of " Flora of 

 Syria, Palestine, and Sinai," and Joseph Bornmuller, author of 

 " Beitriige zur Kenntniss der Flora von Syrien und Palastina," had 

 spent a great deal of time botanizing in the neighborhood of 

 Rasheyya, the locality on Mount Hermon from which Kotschy's 

 specimen was supposed to have come. As these skillful botanists did 

 not report any Triticum, I concluded that Kotschy's specimen must 

 in reality have come from some other place—that an error had been 

 made in attributing it to Rasheyya. But when I visited Berlin in 

 the summer of 1905 Messrs. Ascherson and Schweinfurth brought 

 up the question again, and I decided to resume the investigation at 

 the earliest opportunity. 



In June, 1906, I took a long trip to upper Galilee, intending to go 

 as far as Mount Hermon and to spend as much time as necessary in 

 looking for Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides. 



On June 18, I was walking with my friend, the agronomist Mr. M. 

 Bermann, in the vineyard of the Jewish Agricultural Colony at Rosh 

 Pinar. at the foot of Jebel Safed (see PL I, fig. 2), and was trying 



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