COEN. 
15 
and death. Happily, those improvements which enable us now 
to cultivate a less hardy grain (for such was wheat formerly, 
with greater reason than at present, held to be), have in our day 
freed man from those devastations which a bad year of rye 
entailed upon the human family in times gone by. 
Bariev, the last cereal on which we shall comment, is 
practically known under three forms according to the arrange- 
ment of the seeds, viz. — 
so? 
TWO-ROWED. FOUR-ROWED. 
0 A o 
ofio 
0 U 0 
SIX-ROWED. 
The two-rowed forms are those ordinarily cultivated in 
England ; the six-rowed is more grown in Scotland, where it is 
known under the name of Bere. The four-rowed is, perhaps, 
only a variety of the six-rowed, as, in fact, may be the two- 
rowed — being, in one case, an abortion of a single seed in each 
spikelet ; and in the other, the non-perfecting of two seeds ; the 
whole spikelet having perfect seeds in the bere. 
Barley belongs to the botanical genus Hordeum, but very 
various have been the opinions as to the wild species from which 
it has sprung. In all probability Professor Lindley’s remark 
upon the Hordeum disticlmm is somewhat near the mark : — 
u H. disticlmm .- — This is the only kind of barley that has been found 
apparently wild. We have now before us specimens gathered in Mesopo- 
tamia, during Colonel Chesney’s expedition to the Euphrates, with narrow 
ears, little more than an inch long, exclusive of the awn (beard), or four 
and a half inches, awn included ; and others from the ruins of Persepolis 
with ears scarcely so large as starved rye. Both are straw-coloured, but that 
from Mesopotamia has the glumes much more hairy than the others.” 
The varieties of cereal barley are probably all derived from 
this type, or at least all the two-rowed ones ; but still with us 
it is a matter of doubt whether the specimens just described 
are not after all derived from cultivation. 
The H. hexastichum, six-rowed barley, or bere, in Scotland 
also called “ big,” of which there are several varieties, has been 
recommended from time to time to the English farmer. As 
Morton observes, “ some enterprising farmer brings them out 
as novelties,” while perhaps they have little else to recommend 
them.” 
“ It is only lately (1848),” says the same authority, “that a 
considerable sale of black barley, at high prices, for seed, was 
effected by the advertisement of a story connected with it, 
which was singular enough to attract attention. The whole of 
the stock it was stated, was raised from a seed taken from the 
crop of a goose shot on Lake Simcoe, in West Canada, whilst 
on its southern autumnal flight. But there was no need for the 
Canadian sportsman to have sent us the produce of this solitary 
