;6 



History of Wheat. 



Mount Hermon, in places ascending- to over 2,000 m. ; also on 

 the northern slopes above Rascheia, where Kotschy found it fifty 

 years previously, and from there eastwards to where the plateau 

 extending towards Damascus begins. Here on Mount Hermon 

 it was frequently associated with Triticum cegilopioides, and near 

 Rahle both species formed complete fields, with Triticum dicoc- 

 coides as the predominant partner. Last year Aaronsohn dis- 

 covered Triticum dicoccoides in the country of Gilead, east of 

 Jericho, growing under conditions similar to those in the Hermon 

 district. One feature of Aaronsohn's specimens is their want of 

 homogeneity. This was already observed by the late Professor 

 Koernicke, who, in a letter to Professor Schweinfurth written 

 shortly before his death, said that the diversity of forms in Aaron- 

 sohn's material of Triticum dicoccoides was quite bewildering. 

 This will have to be taken into account in estimating the bearing 

 of Aaronsohn's specimens on the question of the origin of wheat, 

 particularly when the results of the Poppelsdorf experimental series 

 come to be worked out. Aaronsohn not only observed Triticum 

 dicoccoides growing in intimate association with Triticum 

 cegilopioides, but it seems (in one locality) also in the neighbour- 

 hood of wheat fields. The latter is not quite clear, but it is of the 

 greatest importance to be certain about it, as the introduction of 

 hybrids of Triticum dicoccoides and Triticum durum into the 

 Poppelsdorf experiments might considerably affect their validity. 



On comparing the specimens of Triticum dicoccoides, which I 

 have seen myself, with our cultivated wheats, I was at once struck 

 by the great resemblance of a glabrous form to a Hard wheat in 

 the Kew collections from Urumiah in Persian Kurdistan. There 

 was, no doubt, the differential correlation-plexus which separates 

 the wheats proper from the Spelt wheats, and there was also the 

 roundish cross-section of the grains of the Urumiah wheat against 

 the triangular one of the grains of Triticum dicoccoides, a character 

 very likely correlated with the respective looseness and tightness 

 of the grains in the husks. But apart from that and the somewhat 

 longer and considerably rougher awns in the dicoccoides specimen, 

 the resemblance, not so much of the whole spike but of some of 

 the detached spikelets, amounted almost to identity. Even the 

 villosity of the spindle edges was only slightly less pronounced in 

 the Urumiah wheat than in the wild state. Unless we have here, 

 in the glabrous dicoccoides specimen, a cross of Triticum dicoc- 

 coides with Triticum durum (in which case, however, neither the 

 fragility of the spindle nor the tightness of the grain in the husks 

 nor the shape and anatomical structure were affected), the con- 

 clusion seems irresistible that this Triticum dicoccoides is indeed 

 the primitive form of the Hard wheats. Most of the other speci- 

 mens of Triticum dicoccoides which I could examine corresponded 



