336 
On the St. John s- Day Rye. 
name. The translators of the Septuagint, who may reasonably be 
supposed to have had better opportunities of becoming acquainted 
with Egyptian husbandry than the learned divines who translated 
our Bible, render the word which occurs in Exod. ix. 32, by 
the Greek word OXvpx, Olyra ; and they have translated the word, 
where it occurs in Isaiah, by the name of Zea. Herodotus, in his 
2nd book, ed. R. Stephens, p. 65, says, " Other nations live on 
wheat and barley, but among the Egyptians it is the greatest 
disgrace to a man to make his diet on these grains ; but they 
make their bread of Olyra, which other people call Zea." It is 
not probable that those who coveted to live on " better bread, ' 
as Sancho says, '•' than is made of wheat," should have contented 
themselves with black rye-bread. Zea is the name which as 
well ancient as mediaeval and modern botanical writers have 
applied to designate Spelt, Zea Spelta, of which, however, there 
is more than one variety. Among the numerous synonvms for 
rye, which the industry of Steudel has collected, no writer has 
used Zea as synonymous with Secale or Rye. Dioscorides, book 
2, chap. 84, says that Olyra is of the same genus as Zea, Sj)elt, 
but is somewhat less nourishing. One Marcellus, a commen- 
tator on him, had translated Olyra into Rye ; but Matthiolus, 
in Dioscor., p. 399, with apparent justice denies that Olyra was 
Rye ; for he cites Galen as saying that the seed of the Olyra, 
like that of barley and oats, requires to be stripped of its integu- 
ments (decorticated, is his expression) before it could be used ; 
whereas, as Matthiolus observes, rye, like wheat, falls naked out 
of the chaff. Galen also remarks that the colour of barley and 
Olyra is white, and the colour of wheat yellowish ; whereas, as 
Pliny remarks, rye, Secale, is 'nigritia triste,' dismally black, as 
we all know it to be. Galen also interprets Olyra to mean Zea, 
where the term occurs in Hippocrates, as Robert Stephens tes- 
tifies ('Thesaur.' tom. 4, 1558, voce OXupx). And Plmy, in his 
8th book, chap. 10, says that Ohra is called in Italy Arinca, and 
in p. Ill, that the sweetest possible bread is made of it; which 
surely, if intended to be spoken of rye, is inconsistent with what he 
basin the 18th book said of it, that its bitterness makes it most 
unacceptable to the stomach. Plinv also describes the Arinca, in 
his 18lh book, p. 109, as being the especial produce of Gaul, but 
abundant in Italy, whereas he had already confined the cultivation 
of rye to the roots of the Alps : he describes the Arinca as being 
stouter than wheat, with a larger and heavier ear, which is 
wholly inapplicable to the slender straw by which he has above 
characterized rye. He says that the Arinca is with difficulty 
beaten out of the chaff in Greece ; and that for this reason 
Homer (in the last line but one ol the 8th book of the Iliad) 
mentions it as being served up to horses along with barley. The 
two last-mentioned qualities exactly apply to Spelt, for it makes 
