Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/81

Rh barley were first domesticated, to wit, Atlantis. And when the Bronze Age came, we find oats and rye making their appearance with the weapons of bronze, together with a peculiar kind of pea. Darwin concludes (Ibid., vol. i., p. 385) that wheat, barley, rye, and oats were either descended from ten or fifteen distinct species, "most of which are now unknown or extinct," or from four or eight species closely resembling our present forms, or so "widely different as to escape identification;" in which latter case, he says, "man must have cultivated the cereals at an enormously remote period," and at that time practised "some degree of selection."

Rawlinson ("Ancient Monarchies," vol. i., p. 578) expresses the opinion that the ancient Assyrians possessed the pineapple. "The representation on the monuments is so exact that I can scarcely doubt the pineapple being intended." (See Layard's "Nineveh and Babylon," p. 338.) The pineapple (Bromelia ananassa) is supposed to be of American origin, and unknown to Europe before the time of Columbus; and yet, apart from the revelations of the Assyrian monuments, there has been some dispute upon this point. ("Amer. Cyclop.," vol. xiii., p. 528.)

It is not even certain that the use of tobacco was not known