THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. 
737 
being adapted to submit to cultivative processes that has 
developed the corn, which we refer to the beneficent interven- 
tion of Ceres, and for which the moderns may well feel 
thankful to an all-wise Providence, in that He has endowed 
it with those properties. 
Now, this is not a useless discussion, inasmuch as it seems 
to us that a due estimate of the nature and objects of these 
very cultivative processes are all-important in aiding in the 
successful growth of corn at the present moment — facts which 
will come out the more clearly in discussing the nature, 
origin, uses, and a cultivation of the following sorts of cereal 
or corn grasses : 
Wheat . 
Barley 
Itje 
Oats 
Indian Corn (Maize) 
Bice 
Millet . 
ORIGIN. 
. JEgilops ovata. 
. Very doubtful. 
. Secale cereale. 
. Aver.a fatua et strigosa. 
. Zea Mais. 
. Oryza sativa. 
. Sorghum. 
Wheat has nowhere been found as such in the wild state ; 
but the experiments of M. Fabre, detailed in the Journal of 
the Royal Agricultural Society , abundantly show that this 
cereal was derived from a wild grass, at first sight differing 
Avidely from Avheat. Many botanists had arrived at these or 
kindred vieAvs from observation and reasoning upon the sub- 
ject ; but it Avas not until a comparatively recent period that Ave 
possessed any direct evidence derived from experiment. This 
AA r e noAv have, and upon it Ave quote the folloAving passage 
from Mr. Bentham’s article, “ Triticum,” in the Cyclopaedia 
of Agriculture : 
“ It was never contended that their original types have 
become extinct, and various, therefore, have been the conjec- 
tures as to the transformations they may have successively 
undergone, and as no accidental returns toAvards primitive 
forms have been observed, Ave have till lately had but little 
to guide us in these vague surmises. Within the last feAv 
years, hoAvever, the experiments and observations of M. 
Esprit Fabre, of Agde, in the South of France, seem to prove 
a fact Avhich had been more than once suggested, almost 
always scouted, that our agricultural Avheats are cultivated 
varieties of a set of grasses common in the South of Europe, 
Avhicli botanists have uniformly regarded as belonging to a 
different genus, namely, AEgilops. 
“ The principal characters by Avhicli the latter genus had 
been distinguished consisted in the greater fragility of the 
ear, and in the glumes, i. e. the chaff- scales being generally 
