Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/231

Rh The sagas of Iceland show unquestionably that some time about the year 1000 the Norsemen landed in North America. Where they landed has been a question. The sagas describe the natives they met, the Skrellings, as small and ugly, great of eye and broad of cheek. "And they came in skin canoes." The description fits only the Esquimaux. The sagas relate further, however, that the Norsemen found mösurr wood and self-sown wheat and that in the spring they filled their boats with "wine berries." Students of the sagas have taken the wineberries to be grapes, the self-sown wheat to be wild rice and the mösurr wood to be maple. There were discrepancies here. The ethnologists say the Esquimaux have not wandered south, and the botanists find that the grape and the wild-rice do not grow in the northeast. It may also be pointed out that grapes are not gathered in the spring even in the most flourishing circumstances.

Some have ridiculed the sagas, some have brought the Esquimaux as far south as Boston, others have turned the Skrellings into Indians in spite of their description. It remained for a botanist, Professor M. L. Fernald, to show that the mösurr wood is birch, that the wild wheat is the Strand wheat (Elymus arenarius) a plant familiar to the Icelanders, and that the wineberry is either the mountain cranberry that is in its prime in the spring or one of the wild currants, both plants being known to the Norsemen as vínber or wine berries. The plentiful occurrence of these species north of the St. Lawrence River straightens out all the inconsistencies and makes the geography, ethnology and biology of the old sagas perfectly plausible.

This short illustration typifies the method of the botanical historian, though perhaps the details of his work had best be explained. Foremost in the significance of its evidence is the geographical distribution of the wild plant and its subvarieties. From this knowledge one may sometimes locate the point of origin with surprising definiteness. But often an important cultivated species has no known progenitor in the wild. This lack of information is unfortunate for the investigator, but not prohibitive of results. It makes the problem only that much more interesting. The next point of attack is to discover the distribution of the wild species nearest related by their structure and characteristics to the material under investigation. The fact that an organic evolution has occurred is the master key that unlocks many problems. Classification along natural lines was made possible by establishing the fact of evolution. The relatives of plants are hall-marked in a manner not often mistakable, and if the general family group is not too widely distributed, the problem may be considered as fairly well along.

If there are no near relatives extant, if the plant is the last leaf upon the family tree, one must turn to the evidence of the plant itself. By this I mean he must study the inheritance of the various characters