Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/39

Rh matter from an evolutionary standpoint, according to which related races, varieties and species had a common origin, we can arrive logically at but one conclusion, namely, that the most ancient wheats were those with a fragile rachis. One arrives at the same conclusion on comparing the cultivated barley, having an articulated rachis, with the wild barley which has a fragile rachis.

The well-preserved emmer glumes in this bottle which I am going to have passed around were found at Abusir in the tomb of the king Newoser-re (Dyn. v. 2400 B.C.). This material was very kindly sent me by the Oriental Society of Berlin.

If, on the other hand, we look to Europe and Asia to see in which countries these ancient cereals are still cultivated, we shall find them in the northern Jura, in the countries of the Basques, the Servians, the Swabians and the Bactrians of Persia. We see that these cereals have maintained themselves only in mountainous countries or among the peoples most remote from the centers of civilization. The cultivation of emmer has long since disappeared from the fertile plains of Egypt, where it was superseded by that of hard wheat.

Knowing, therefore, that the wheats cultivated in most ancient times were those with a fragile rachis, we are confronted by a second question: Where is the home of this type of wheat? In what country did our first parents, our prehistoric ancestors, find this plant, most precious of all plants?

As for the einkorn, we know its home since the botanist Balansa found it in Asia Minor. It is true that Balansa's wild plant differs from the cultivated einkorn in certain characters and it has been named Triticum monococcum, var. ægilipoides. But it has already been noted that this species is too distinct from wheats to allow it to be considered as their prototype.

For more than a century botanists and historians of civilization have sought for the home of wheat. In vain have all the resources of comparative morphology been employed, as well as those of history and philology. The origin of wheat remains shrouded in mystery. The ancients attributed its introduction into the world of men to some beneficent goddess, thus putting the mystery of its first cultivation back of all written history.

A botanist of great merit, Count Solms Laubach, weary of this discussion, finally advocated the idea that the wheat of the present day, with its numerous varieties, might be the descendant of plants which have to-day disappeared, either because their home was submerged by the sea or because they were the result of a convergence of several species deviating in the same direction or mixed in cultivation, which would make the determination of their origin almost impossible.

In the universities the view has generally been held that the home