;8 



History of Wheat. 



Dioscorides at Vienna, an illustrated manuscript of Dioscorides' 

 Materia Medica, a wheat is figured to illustrate the paragraph on 

 XovSpos, a kind of pearl-barley prepared from the ZeV S/kokkos 

 and this wheat is apparently an Emmer with a somewhat stout 

 head. It is certainly not a Spelt proper, Triticum Spelta, which 

 is usually considered to have been Zta or "OXvpa of Greek litera- 

 ture. To-day the cultivation of Emmer is confined in Europe to a 

 few districts in South Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and 

 Servia. In Egypt we find it mentioned under the name of Triticum 

 Spelta as being grown near Alexandria until the 'forties of the 

 last century ; but since then it seems to have disappeared from 

 there as from other parts of the Orient. On the other hand, it 

 still has, as already stated, a hold in Abyssinia with its old and 

 conservative civilisation, and to a very limited extent in India, 

 where it was probably introduced long ago by Mohammedan 

 traders. The Hard wheats lead us naturally to the so-called 

 English wheats, or the Triticum turgidum stock, and the Polish 

 wheats. 



The English wheats are, like the Hard wheats, warm-country 

 wheats, and have no doubt the same origin. Schweinfurth men- 

 tions Triticum turgidum among the cereals of ancient Egypt, and 

 Unger believed he recognised it in a spindle fragment which he 

 found in a brick from the walls of the ancient town of Eileythia. 

 Beyond this there is practically nothing known about its early 

 history. It has probably originated along with the Hard wheats. 

 Still less is known in this respect about the Polish wheats. Koer- 

 nicke, in his " Handbuch der Getreidekunde," considered it as a 

 very distinct sub-species, which he opposed to all the other wheals 

 taken together; Hackel even treats it as a distinct species. But 

 in a posthumous paper just published, Koernicke recognises the 

 Polish wheats as mutations from Hard wheats, characterised by 

 the over-development of the outer or involucral glumes ; various 

 North African Hard wheats certainly support this view very 

 strongly. Polish wheat is first mentioned in the seventeenth 

 century ; although it may not have been known to the Greeks, 

 it is probably of much earlier origin than is generally assumed, 

 as it is represented in Abyssinia by several marked races. Out- 

 side of Africa its cultivation is confined nowadays to Italy and 

 Spain. 



We have so far accounted for the two wild wheats, the Einkorn, 

 the Emmer, the Hard, the English and Polish wheats. Their 

 relations and early history may be considered as fairly established. 

 It is different with the Soft and the Dwarf wheats, which have this 

 in common and in contradistinction from the Hard wheats, that 

 the outer or involucral glumes are keeled only in the upper part 

 but rounded below. The Soft wheats are extremely numerous, 

 and show perhaps a greater range of variation than the others. 



