Chapter V: Plants Cultivated for Their Seeds (2)

Wittmack insists upon the general and ancient use of the haricot in several parts of South America. This proves at least that several species were indigenous and cultivated. He quotes the testimony of Joseph Acosta, one of the first writers after the conquest, who says that “the Peruvians cultivated vegetables which they called _frisoles_ and _palares_, and which they used as the Spaniards use _garbanzos_ (chick-pea), beans and lentils. I have not found,” he adds, “that these or other European vegetables were found here before the coming of the Europeans.” _Frisole_, _fajol_, _fasoler_, are Spanish names for the common haricot, corruptions of the Latin _faselus_, _fasolus_, _faseolus_. _Paller_ is American.

I may take this opportunity of explaining the origin of the French name haricot. I sought for it formerly in vain;[1712] but I noticed that Tournefort[1713] (_Instit._, p. 415) was the first to use it. I called attention also to the existence of the word _arachos_ (Greek: arachos) in Theophrastus, probably for a kind of vetch, and of the Sanskrit word _harenso_ for the common pea. I rejected as improbable the notion that the name of a vegetable could come from the dish called haricot or laricot of mutton, as suggested by an English author, and criticized Bescherelle, who derived the word from Keltic, while the Breton words are totally different, and signify small bean (_fa-munno_) or kind of pea (_pis-ram_). Lettré, in his dictionary, also seeks the etymology of the word. Without any acquaintance with my article, he inclines to the theory that _haricot_, the plant, comes from the ragout, seeing that the latter is older in the language, and that a certain resemblance may be traced between the haricot bean and the morsels of meat in the ragout, or else that this bean was suitable to the making of the dish. It is certain that this vegetable was called in French _faséole_ or _fazéole_, from the Latin name, until nearly the end of the seventeenth century; but chance has led me to discover the real origin of the word haricot. An Italian name, _araco_, found in Durante and Matthioli, in Latin _Aracus niger_,[1714] was given to a leguminous plant which modern botanists attribute to _Lathyrus ochrus_. It is not surprising that an Italian seventeenth-century name should be transported by French cultivators of the following century to another leguminous plant, and that _ara_ should have been _ari_. It is the sort of mistake which is common now. Besides, _aracos_ or _arachos_ has been attributed by commentators to several _Leguminosœ_ of the genera _Lathyrus_, _Vicia_, etc. Durante gives the Greek _arachos_ as the synonym for his _araco_, whereby we see the etymology. Père Feuillée[1715] wrote in French _aricot_; before him Tournefort spelt it _haricot_, in the belief, perhaps, that the Greek word was written with an aspirate, which is not the case; at least in the best authors.

I may sum up as follows:—(1) _Phaseolus vulgaris_ has not been long cultivated in India, the south-west of Asia, and Egypt; (2) it is not certain that it was known in Europe before the discovery of America; (3) at this epoch the number of varieties suddenly increased in European gardens, and all authors commenced to mention them; (4) the majority of the species of the genus exist in South America; (5) seeds apparently belonging to the species have been discovered in Peruvian tombs of an uncertain date, intermixed with many species, all American.

I do not examine whether _Phaseolus vulgaris_ existed in both hemispheres previous to cultivation, because examples of this nature are exceedingly rare among non-aquatic phanerogamous plants of tropical countries. Perhaps there is not one in a thousand, and even then human agency may be suspected.[1716] To open this question in the case of _Ph. vulgaris_, it should at least be found wild in both old and new worlds, which has not happened. If it had occupied so vast an area, we should see signs of it in individuals really wild in widely separate regions on the same continent, as is the case with the following species, _Ph. lunatas_.

+Scimetar-podded Kidney Bean+, or +Sugar Bean+.—_Phaseolus lunatus_, Linnæus; _Phaseo lunatus macrocarpus_; Bentham, _Ph. inamœnus_, Linnæus.

This haricot, as well as that called _Lima_, is so widely diffused in tropical countries, that it has been described under different names.[1717] All these forms can be classed in two groups, of which Linnæus made different species. The commonest in our gardens is that which has been called since the beginning of the century the _Lima haricot_. It may be distinguished by its height, by the size of its pods and beans. It lasts several years in countries which are favourable to it.

Linnæus believed that his _Ph. lunatus_ came from Bengal and the other from Africa, but he gives no proof. For a century his assertions were repeated. Now, Bentham,[1718] who is careful about origins, believes the species and its variety to be certainly American; he only doubts about its presence as a wild plant both in Africa and Asia. I see no indication whatever of ancient existence in Asia. The plant has never been found wild, and it has no name in the modern languages of India or in Sanskrit.[1719] It is not mentioned in Chinese works. Anglo-Indians call it French bean,[1720] like the common haricot, which shows how modern is its cultivation.

It is cultivated in nearly all tropical Africa. However, Schweinfurth and Ascherson[1721] do not mention it for Abyssinia, Nubia, or Egypt. Oliver[1722] quotes a number of specimens found in Guinea and the interior of Africa, without saying whether they were wild or cultivated. If we suppose the species of African origin or of very early introduction, it would have spread to Egypt and thence to India.

The facts are quite different for South America. Bentham mentions wild specimens from the Amazon basin and Central Brazil. They belong especially to the large variety (_macrocarpus_), which abounds also in the Peruvian tombs of Ancon, according to Wittmack.[1723] It is evidently a Brazilian species, diffused by cultivation, and perhaps long since naturalized here and there in tropical America. I am inclined to believe it was introduced into Guinea by the slave trade, and that it spread thence into the interior and the coast of Mozambique.

+Moth+, or +Aconite-leaved Kidney Bean+—_Phaseolus aconitifolius_, Willdenow.

An annual species grown in India as fodder, and of which the seeds are eatable, though but little valued. The Hindustani name is _mout_, among the Sikhs _moth_. It is somewhat like _Ph. trilobus_, which is cultivated for the seed. _Ph. aconitifolius_ is wild in British India from Ceylon to the Himalayas.[1724] The absence of a Sanskrit name, and of different names in modern Indian languages, points to a recent cultivation.

+Three-lobed Kidney Bean+—_Phaseolus trilobus_, Willdenow.

One of the most commonly cultivated species in India;[1725] at least in the last few years, for Roxburgh,[1726] at the end of the eighteenth century, had only seen it wild. All authors agree in considering it as wild from the foot of the Himalayas to Ceylon. It also exists in Nubia, Abyssinia, and Zambesi;[1727] it is not said whether wild or cultivated. Piddington gives a Sanskrit name, and several names in modern Indian languages, which shows that the species has been cultivated, or at least known for three thousand years.

+Green Gram+, or +Múng+—_Phaseolus mungo_, Linnæus.

A species commonly cultivated in India and in the Nile Valley. The considerable number of varieties, and the existence of three different names in the modern languages of India, point to a cultivation of one or two thousand years, but there is no Sanskrit name.[1728] In Africa it is probably recent. Anglo-Indian botanists agree that it is wild in India.

+Lablab+, or +Wall+—_Dolichos Lablab_, Linnæus.

This species is much cultivated in India and tropical Africa. Roxburgh counts as many as seven varieties with Indian names. Piddington quotes in his _Index_ a Sanskrit name, _schimbi_, which recurs in modern languages. Its culture dates perhaps from three thousand years. Yet the species was not anciently diffused in China, or in Western Asia and Egypt; at least, I can find no trace of it. The little extension of these edible _Leguminosæ_ beyond India in ancient times is a singular fact. It is possible that their cultivation is not of ancient date.

The lablab is undoubtedly wild in India, and also, it is said, in Java.[1729] It has become naturalized from cultivation in the Seychelles.[1730] The indications of authors are not positive enough to say whether it is wild in Africa.[1731]

+Lubia+—_Dolichos Lubia_, Forskal.

This species, cultivated in Europe under the name of _lubia_, _loubya_, _loubyé_, according to Forskal and Delile,[1732] is little known to botanists. According to the latter author it exists also in Syria, Persia, and India; but I do not find this in any way confirmed in modern works on these two countries. Schweinfurth and Ascherson[1733] admit it as a distinct species, cultivated in the Nile Valley. Hitherto no one has found it wild. No _Dolichos_ or _Phaseolus_ is known in the monuments of ancient Egypt. We shall see from the evidence of the common names that these plants were probably introduced into Egyptian agriculture after the time of the Pharaohs.

The name _lubia_ is used by the Berbers, unchanged, and by the Spaniards as _alubia_ for the common haricot, _Phaseolus vulgaris_. Although _Phaseolus_ and _Dolichos_ are very similar, this is an example of the little value of common names as a proof of species. _Loba_ is, as we have seen, one of the Hindustani names for _Phaseolus vulgaris_,[1734] and _lobia_ that of _Dolichos sinensis_ in the same language.[1735] Orientalists should tell us whether _lubia_ is an old word in Semitic languages. I do not find a similar name in Hebrew, and it is possible that the Armenians or the Arabs took _lubia_ from the Greek _lobos_ (λοβος), which means any projection, like the lobe of the ear, a fruit of the nature of a pod, and more particularly, according to Galen, _Ph. vulgaris_. _Lobion_ (Λοβιον) in Dioscorides is the fruit of _Ph. vulgaris_, at least in the opinion of commentators.[1736] It remains as _loubion_ in modern Greek, with the same meaning.[1737]

+Bambarra Ground Nut+—_Glycine subterranea_, Linnæus, junr.; _Voandzeia subterranea_, Petit Thouars.

The earliest travellers in Madagascar remarked this leguminous annual, cultivated by the natives for the pod or seed, dressed like peas, French beans, etc. It resembles the earth, particularly in that the flower-stem curves downwards, and plunges the young fruit or pod into the earth. Its cultivation is common in the gardens of tropical Africa, and it is found, but less frequently, in those of Southern Asia.[1738] It seems that it is not much grown in America,[1739] except in Brazil, where it is called _mandubi di Angola_.[1740]

Early writers on Asia do not mention it; its origin must, therefore, be sought in Africa. Loureiro[1741] had seen it on the eastern coast of this continent, and Petit Thouars in Madagascar, but they do not say that it was wild. The authors of the flora of Senegambia[1742] described it as “cultivated and probably wild” in Galam. Lastly, Schweinfurth and Ascherson[1743] found it wild on the banks of the Nile from Khartoum to Gondokoro. In spite of the possibility of naturalization from cultivation, it is extremely probable that the plant is wild in tropical Africa.

+Buckwheat+—_Polygonum fagopyrum_, Linnæus; _Fagopyrum esculentum_, Mœnch.

The history of this species has been completely cleared up in the last few years. It grows wild in Mantschuria, on the banks of the river Amur,[1744] in Dahuria, and near Lake Baikal.[1745] It is also indicated in China and in the mountains of the north of India,[1746] but I do not find that in these regions its wild character is certain. Roxburgh has only seen it in a cultivated state in the north of India, and Bretschneider[1747] thinks it doubtful that it is indigenous in China. Its cultivation is not ancient, for the first Chinese author who mentions it lived in the tenth or eleventh century of the Christian era.

Buckwheat is cultivated in the Himalayas under the names _ogal_ or _ogla_ and _kouton_.[1748] As there is no Sanskrit name for this species nor for the two following, I doubt the antiquity of their cultivation in the mountains of Central Asia. It was certainly unknown to the Greeks and Romans. The name _fagopyrum_ is an invention of modern botanists from the similarity in the shape of the seed to a beech-nut, whence also the German _buchweitzen_[1749] (corrupted in English into buckwheat) and the Italian _faggina_.

The names of this plant in European languages of Aryan origin have not a common root. Thus the western Aryans did not know the species any more than the Sanskrit-speaking Orientals, a further sign of the nonexistence of the plant in the mountains of Central Asia. Even at the present day it is probably unknown in the north of Persia and in Turkey, since floras do not mention it.[1750] Bosc states, in the _Dictionnaire d’Agriculture_, that Olivier had seen it wild in Persia, but I do not find this in this naturalist’s published account of his travels.

The species came into Europe in the Middle Ages, through Tartary and Russia. The first mention of its cultivation in Germany occurs in a Mecklenburg register of 1436.[1751] In the sixteenth century it spread towards the centre of Europe, and in poor soil, as in Brittany, it became important. Reynier, who, as a rule, is very accurate, imagined that the French name _sarrasin_ was Keltic;[1752] but M. le Gall wrote to me formerly that the Breton names simply mean black wheat or black corn, _ed-du_ and _gwinis-du_. There is no original name in Keltic languages, which seems natural now that we know the origin of the species.[1753]

When the plant was introduced into Belgium and into France, and even when it became known in Italy, that is to say in the sixteenth century, the name _blé sarrasin_ (Saracen wheat) or _sarrasin_ was commonly adopted. Common names are often so absurd, and so unthinkingly bestowed, that we cannot tell in this particular case whether the name refers to the colour of the grain which was that attributed to the Saracens, or to the supposed introduction from the country of the Arabs or Moors. It was not then known that the species did not exist in the countries south of the Mediterranean, nor even in Syria and Persia. It is also possible that the idea of a southern origin was taken from the name _sarrasin_, which was given from the colour. This origin was admitted until the end of the last and even in the present century.[1754] Reynier was, fifty years ago, the first to oppose it.

Buckwheat sometimes escapes from cultivation and becomes quasi-wild. The nearer we approach its original country the more often this occurs, whence it results that it is hard to define the limit of the wild plant on the confines of Europe and Asia, in the Himalayas, and in China. In Japan these semi-naturalizations are not rare.[1755]

+Tartary Buckwheat+—_Polygonum tataricum_, Linnæus; _Fagopyrum tataricum_, Gærtner.

Less sensitive to cold than the common buckwheat, but yielding a poorer kind of seed, this species is sometimes cultivated in Europe and Asia—in the Himalayas,[1756] for instance; but its culture is recent. Authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries do not mention it, and Linnæus was one of the first to speak of it as of Tartar origin. Roxburgh and Hamilton had not seen it in Northern India in the beginning of this century, and I find no indication of it in China and Japan.

It is undoubtedly wild in Tartary and Siberia, as far as Dauria;[1757] but Russian botanists have not found it further east, in the basin of the river Amur.[1758]

As this plant came from Tartary into Eastern Europe later than the common buckwheat, it is the latter which bears in several Slav languages the names _tatrika_, _tatarka_, or _tattar_, which would better suit the Tartary buckwheat.

It seems that the Aryan peoples must have known the species, and yet no name is mentioned in the ancient Indo-European languages. No trace of it has hitherto been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland or of Savoy.

+Notch-seeded Buckwheat+—_Polygonum emarginatum_, Roth; _Fagopyrum emarginatum_, Meissner.

This third species of buckwheat is grown in the highlands of the north-east of India, under the name _phaphra_ or _phaphar_,[1759] and in China.[1760] I find no positive proof that it has been found wild. Roth only says that it “inhabits China,” and that the grain is used for food. Don,[1761] who was the first of Anglo-Indian botanists to mention it, says that it is hardly considered wild. It is not mentioned in floras of the Amur valley, nor of Japan. Judging from the countries where it is cultivated, it is probably wild in the Eastern Himalayas and the north-west of China.

The genus _Fagopyrum_ has eight species, all of temperate Asia.

+Quinoa+—_Chenopodium quinoa_, Willdenow.

The quinoa was a staple food of the natives of New Granada, Peru, and Chili, in the high and temperate parts at the time of the conquest. Its cultivation has persisted in these countries from custom, and on account of the abundance of the product.

From all time the distinction has existed between the quinoa with coloured leaves, and the quinoa with green leaves and white seed.[1762] The latter was regarded by Moquin[1763] as a variety of a little known species, believed to be Asiatic; but I believe that I showed conclusively that the two American quinoas are two varieties, probably very ancient, of a single species.[1764] The less coloured, which is also the most farinaceous, is probably derived from the other.

The white quinoa yields a grain which is much esteemed at Lima, according to information furnished by the _Botanical Magazine_, where a good drawing may be seen (pl. 3641). The leaves may be dressed in the same manner as spinach.[1765]

No botanist has mentioned the quinoa as wild or semi-wild. The most recent and complete work on one of the countries where the species is cultivated, the _Flora of Chili_, by Cl. Gay, speaks of it only as a cultivated plant. Père Feuillée and Humboldt said the same for Peru and New Granada. It is perhaps due to the insignificance of the plant and its aspect of a garden weed that collectors have neglected to bring back wild specimens.

+Kiery+—_Amarantus frumentaceus_, Roxburgh.

This annual is cultivated in the Indian peninsula for its small farinaceous grain, which is in some localities the principal food of the natives.[1766] Fields of this species, of a red or golden colour, produce a beautiful effect.[1767] From Roxburgh’s account, Dr. Buchanan “discovered it on the hills of Mysore and Coimbatore,” which seems to indicate a wild condition. _Amarantus speciosus_, cultivated in gardens and figured on pl. 2227 of the _Botanical Magazine_, appears to be the same species. Hamilton found it in Nepal.[1768] A variety or allied species, _Amarantus anardana_, Wallich,[1769] is grown on the slopes of the Himalayas, but has been hitherto ill defined by botanists. Other species are used as vegetables (see p. 100, _Amarantus gangeticus_).

+Chestnut+—_Castanea vulgaris_, Lamarck.

The chestnut, belonging to the order _Cupuliferæ_, has an extended but disjunctive natural area. It forms forests and woods in mountainous parts of the temperate zone from the Caspian Sea to Portugal. It has also been found in the mountains of Edough in Algeria, and more recently towards the frontier of Tunis (Letourneux). If we take into account the varieties _japonica_ and _americana_, it exists also in Japan and in the temperate region of North America.[1770] It has been sown or planted in several parts of the south and west of Europe, and it is now difficult to know if it is wild or cultivated. However, cultivation consists chiefly in the operation of grafting good varieties on the trees which yield indifferent fruit. For this purpose the variety which produces but one large kernel is preferred to those which bear two or three, separated by a membrane, which is the natural state of the species.

The Romans in Pliny’s time[1771] already distinguished eight varieties, but we cannot discover from the text of this author whether they possessed the variety with a single kernel (Fr. _marron_). The best chestnuts came from Sardis in Asia Minor, and from the neighbourhood of Naples. Olivier de Serres,[1772] in the sixteenth century, praises the chestnuts _Sardonne_ and _Tuscane_, which produced the single-kernelled fruit called the _Lyons marron_.[1773] He considered that these varieties came from Italy, and Targioni[1774] tells us that the name _marrone_ or _marone_ was employed in that country in the Middle Ages (1170).

+Wheat and Kindred Species.+—The innumerable varieties of wheat, properly so called, of which the ripened grain detaches itself naturally from the husk, have been classed into four groups by Vilmorin,[1775] which form distinct species, or modifications of the common wheat according to different authors. I am obliged to distinguish them in order to study their history, but this, as will be seen, supports the opinion of a single species.[1776]

+1. Common Wheat+—_Triticum vulgare_, Villars; _Triticum hybernum_ and _T. æstivum_, Linnæus.

According to the experiments of the Abbé Rozier, and later of Tessier, the distinction between autumn and spring wheats has no importance. “All wheats,” says the latter,[1777] “are either spring or autumn sown, according to the country. They all pass with time from the one state to the other, as I have ascertained. They only need to be gradually accustomed to the change, by sowing the autumn wheat a little later, spring wheat a little earlier, year by year.” The fact is that among the immense number of varieties there are some which feel the cold of the winter more than others, and it has become the custom to sow them in the spring.[1778] We need take no note of this distinction in studying the question of origin, especially as the greater number of the varieties thus obtained date from a remote period.

The cultivation of wheat is prehistoric in the old world. Very ancient Egyptian monuments, older than the invasion of the shepherds, and the Hebrew Scriptures show this cultivation already established, and when the Egyptians or Greeks speak of its origin, they attribute it to mythical personages, Isis, Ceres, Triptolemus.[1779] The earliest lake-dwellings of Western Switzerland cultivated a small-grained wheat, which Heer[1780] has carefully described and figured under the name _Triticum vulgare antiquorum_. From various facts, taken collectively, we gather that the first lake-dwellers of Robenhausen were at least contemporary with the Trojan war, and perhaps earlier. The cultivation of their wheat persisted in Switzerland until the Roman conquest, as we see from specimens found at Buchs. Regazzoni also found it in the rubbish-heaps of the lake-dwellers of Varese, and Sordelli in those of Lagozza in Lombardy.[1781] Unger found the same form in a brick of the pyramid of Dashur, Egypt, to which he assigns a date, 3359 B.C. (Unger, _Bot. Streifzüge_, vii.; _Ein Ziegel_, etc., p. 9), Another variety (_Triticum vulgare compactum muticum_, Heer) was less common in Switzerland in the earliest stone age, but it has been more often found among the less ancient lake-dwellers of Western Switzerland and of Italy.[1782] A third intermediate variety has been discovered at Aggtelek in Hungary, cultivated in the stone age.[1783] None of these is identical with the wheat now cultivated, as more profitable varieties have taken their place.

The Chinese, who grew wheat 2700 B.C., considered it a gift direct from heaven.[1784] In the annual ceremony of sowing five kinds of seed, instituted by the Emperor Shen-nung or Chin-nong, wheat is one species, the others being rice, sorghum, _Setaria italica_, and soy.

The existence of different names for wheat in the most ancient languages confirms the belief in a great antiquity of cultivation. The Chinese name is _mai_, the Sanskrit _sumana_ and _gôdhûma_, the Hebrew _chittah_, Egyptian _br_, Guancho _yrichen_, without mentioning several names in languages derived from the primitive Sanskrit, nor a Basque name, _ogaia_ or _okhaya_, which dates perhaps from the Iberians,[1785] and several Finn, Tartar, and Turkish names, etc.,[1786] which are probably Turanian. This great diversity might be explained by a wide natural area in the case of a very common wild plant, but this is far from being the case of wheat. On the contrary, it is difficult to prove its existence in a wild state in a few places in Western Asia, as we shall see. If it had been widely diffused before cultivation, descendants would have remained here and there in remote countries. The manifold names of ancient languages must, therefore, be attributed to the extreme antiquity of its culture in the temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa—an antiquity greater than that of the most ancient languages. We have two methods of discovering the home of the species previous to cultivation in the immense zone stretching from China to the Canaries: first, the opinion of ancient authors; second, the existence, more or less proved, of wheat in a wild state in a given country.

According to the earliest of all historians, Berosus, a Chaldean priest, fragments of whose writings have been preserved by Herodotus, wild wheat (_Frumentum agreste_[1787]) might be seen growing in Mesopotamia. The texts of the Bible alluding to the abundance of wheat in Canaan prove no more than that the plant was cultivated there, and that it was very productive. Strabo,[1788] born 50 B.C., says that, according to Aristobulus, a grain very similar to wheat grew wild upon the banks of the Indus on the 25th parallel of latitude. He also says[1789] that in Hircania (the modern Mazanderan) the grains of wheat which fell from the ear sowed themselves. This may be observed to some degree at the present day in all countries, and the author says nothing upon the important question whether this accidental sowing reproduced itself in the same place from generation to generation. According to the _Odyssey_,[1790] wheat grew in Sicily without the help of man. But it is impossible to attach great importance to the words of a poet, and of a poet whose very existence is contested. Diodorus Siculus at the beginning of the Christian era says the same thing, and deserves greater confidence, since he is a Sicilian. Yet he may easily have been mistaken as to the wild character, as wheat was then generally cultivated in Sicily. Another passage in Diodorus[1791] mentions the tradition that Osiris found wheat and barley growing promiscuously with other plants at Nisa, and Dureau de la Malle has proved that this town was in Palestine. Among all this evidence, that of Berosus and that of Strabo for Mesopotamia and Western India alone appear to me of any value.

The five species of seed of the ceremony instituted by Chin-nong are considered by Chinese scholars to be natives of their country,[1792] and Bretschneider adds that communication between China and Western Asia dates only from the embassy of Chang-kien in the second century before Christ. A more positive assertion is needed, however, before we can believe wheat to be indigenous in China; for a plant cultivated in western Asia two or three thousand years before the epoch of Chin-nong, and of which the seeds are so easily transported, may have been introduced into the north of China by isolated and unknown travellers, as the stones of peaches and apricots were probably carried from China into Persia in prehistoric time.

Botanists have ascertained that wheat is not wild in Sicily at the present day.[1793] It sometimes escapes from cultivation, but it does not persist indefinitely.[1794] The plant which the inhabitants call wild wheat, _Frumentu sarvaggiu_, which covers uncultivated ground, is _Ægilops ovata_, according to Inzenga.[1795]

A zealous collector, Balansa, believed that he had found wheat growing on Mount Sipylus, in Asia Minor, under circumstances in which it was impossible not to believe it wild;[1796] but the plant he brought back is a spelt, _Triticum monococcum_, according to a very careful botanist, to whom it was submitted for examination.[1797] Olivier,[1798] before him, when he was on the right bank of the Euphrates, to the north-west of Anah, a country unfit for cultivation, “found in a kind of ravine, wheat, barley, and spelt, which,” he adds, “we have already seen several times in Mesopotamia.”

Linnæus says,[1799] that Heintzelmann found wheat in the country of the Baschkirs, but no one has confirmed this statement, and no modern botanist has seen the species really wild in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus or the north of Persia. Bunge,[1800] whose attention was drawn to this point, declares that he has seen no indication which leads him to believe that cereals are indigenous in that country. It does not even appear that wheat has a tendency in these regions to spring up accidentally outside cultivated ground. I have not discovered any mention of it as a wild plant in the north of India, in China, or Mongolia.

It is remarkable that wheat has been twice asserted to be indigenous in Mesopotamia, at an interval of twenty three centuries, once by Berosus, and once by Olivier in our own day. The Euphrates valley lying nearly in the middle of the belt of cultivation which formerly extended from China to the Canaries, it is infinitely probable that it was the principal habitation of the species in very early prehistoric times. The area may have extended towards Syria, as the climate is very similar, but to the east and west of Western Asia wheat has probably never existed but as a cultivated plant; anterior, it is true, to all known civilization.

+2. Turgid+, and +Egyptian Wheat+—_Triticum turgidum_ and _T. compositum_, Linnæus.

Among the numerous common names of the varieties which come under this head, we find that of Egyptian wheat. It appears that it is now much cultivated in that country and in the whole of the Nile valley. A. P. de Candolle says[1801] that he recognized this wheat amongst seeds taken from the sarcophagi of ancient mummies, but he had not seen the ears. Unger[1802] thinks it was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, yet he gives no proof founded on drawings or specimens. The fact that no Hebrew or Armenian name[1803] can be attributed to the species seems to me important. It proves at least that the remarkable forms with branching ears, commonly called _wheat of miracle_, _wheat of abundance_, did not exist in antiquity, for they would not have escaped the knowledge of the Israelites. No Sanskrit name is known, nor even any modern Indian names, and I cannot discover any Persian name. The Arab names which Delile[1804] attributes to the species belong perhaps to other varieties of wheat. There is no Berber name.[1805] From all this it results, I think, that the plants united under the name of _Triticum turgidum_, and especially the varieties with branching ears, are not ancient in the north of Africa or in the west of Asia.

Oswald Heer,[1806] in his curious paper upon the plants of the lake-dwellers of the stone age in Switzerland, attributes to _T. turgidum_ two non-branched ears, the one bearded, the other almost without beard, of which he gives drawings. Later, in an exploration of the lake-dwellings of Robenhausen, Messicommer did not find it, although there was abundant store of grain.[1807] Strœbel and Pigorini said they found wheat with _grano grosso duro_ (_T. turgidum_), in the lake-dwellings of Parmesan.[1808] For the rest, Heer[1809] considers this to be a variety or race of the common wheat, and Sordelli inclines to the same opinion.

Fraas thinks that the _krithanias_ of Theophrastus was _T. turgidum_, but this is absolutely uncertain. According to Heldreich,[1810] the great wheat is of modern introduction into Greece. Pliny[1811] spoke briefly of a wheat with branching ears, yielding one hundred grains, which was most likely our _miraculous wheat_.

Thus history and philology alike lead us to consider the varieties of _Triticum turgidum_ as modifications of the common wheat obtained by cultivation. The form with branching ears is not perhaps earlier than Pliny’s time.

These deductions would be overthrown by the discovery of the _T. turgidum_ in a wild state, which has not hitherto been made with certainty. In spite of C. Koch,[1812] no one admits that it grows, outside cultivation, at Constantinople and in Asia Minor. Boissier’s herbarium, so rich in Eastern plants, has no specimen of it. It is given as wild in Egypt by Schweinfurth, and Ascherson, but this is the result of a misprint.[1813]

+3. Hard Wheat+—_Triticum durum_, Desfontaines.

Long cultivated in Barbary, in the south of Switzerland and elsewhere, it has never been found wild. In the different provinces of Spain it has no less than fifteen names,[1814] and none are derived from the Arab name _quemah_ used in Algeria[1815] and Egypt.[1816] The absence of names in several other countries, especially of original names, is very striking. This is a further indication of a derivation from the common wheat obtained in Spain and the north of Africa at an unknown epoch, perhaps within the Christian era.

+4. Polish Wheat+—_Triticum polonicum_, Linnæus.

This other hard wheat, with yet longer grain, cultivated chiefly in the east of Europe, has not been found wild. It has an original name in German, _Gäner_, _Gommer_, _Gümmer_,[1817] and in other languages names which are connected only with persons or with countries whence the seed was obtained. It cannot be doubted that it is a form obtained by cultivation, probably in the east of Europe, at an unknown, perhaps recent epoch.

_Conclusion as to the Specific Unity of the Principal Races of Wheat._

We have just shown that the history and the vernacular names of the great races of wheat are in favour of a derivation contemporary with man, probably not very ancient, from the common kind of wheat, perhaps from the small-grained wheat formerly cultivated by the Egyptians, and by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy. Alefeld[1818] arrived at the specific unity of _T. vulgare_, _T. turgidum_, and _T. durum_, by means of an attentive observation of the three cultivated together, under the same conditions. The experiments of Henri Vilmorin[1819] on the artificial fertilization of these wheats lead to the same result. Although the author has not yet seen the product of several generations, he has ascertained that the most distinct principal forms can be crossed with ease and produce fertile hybrids. If fertilization be taken as a measure of the intimate degree of affinity which leads to the grouping of individuals into the same species, we cannot hesitate in the case in question, especially with the support of the historical considerations which I have given.

_On the supposed Mummy Wheat._

Before concluding this article, I think it pertinent to say that no grain taken from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and sown by horticulturists has ever been known to germinate. It is not that the thing is impossible, for grains are all the better preserved that they are protected from the air and from variations of temperature or humidity, and certainly these conditions are fulfilled by Egyptian monuments; but, as a matter of fact, the attempts at raising wheat from these ancient seeds have not been successful. The experiment which has been most talked of is that of the Count of Sternberg, at Prague.[1820] He had received the grains from a trustworthy traveller, who assured him they were taken from a sarcophagus. Two of these seeds germinated, it is said, but I have ascertained that in Germany well-informed persons believe there is some imposture, either on the part of the Arabs, who sometimes slip modern seeds into the tombs (even maize, an American plant), or on that of the _employés_ of the Count of Sternberg. The grain known in commerce as mummy wheat has never had any proof of antiquity of origin.

+Spelt and Allied Varieties or Species.+[1821]

Louis Vilmorin,[1822] in imitation of Seringe’s excellent work on cereals,[1823] has grouped together those wheats whose seeds when ripe are closely contained in their envelope or husk, necessitating a special operation to free them from it, a character rather agricultural than botanical. He then enumerates the forms of these wheats under three names, which correspond to as many species of most botanists.

+1. Spelt+—_Triticum spelta_, Linnæus.

Spelt is now hardly cultivated out of south Germany and German-Switzerland. This was not the case formerly. The descriptions of cereals by Greek authors are so brief and insignificant that there is always room for hesitation as to the sense of the words they use. Yet, judging from the customs of which they speak, scholars think[1824] that the Greeks first called spelt _olyra_, afterwards _zeia_, names which we find in Herodotus and Homer. Dioscorides[1825] distinguishes two sorts of _zeia_, which apparently answer to _Triticum spelta_ and _T. monococcum_. It is believed that spelt was the _semen_ (corn, _par excellence_) and the _far_ of Pliny, which he said was used as food by the Latins for 360 years before they knew how to make bread.[1826] As spelt has not been found among the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy, and as the former cultivated the allied varieties called _T. dicoccum_ and _T. monococcum_,[1827] it is possible that the _far_ of the Latins was rather one of these.

The existence of the true spelt in ancient Egypt and the neighbouring countries seems to me yet more doubtful. The _olyra_ of the Egyptians, of which Herodotus speaks, was not the _olyra_ of the Greeks; some authors have supposed it to be rice, _oryza_.[1828] As to spelt, it is a plant which is not grown in such hot countries. Modern travellers from Rauwolf onwards have not seen it in Egyptian cultivation,[1829] nor has it been found in the ancient monuments. This is what led me to suppose[1830] that the Hebrew word _kussemeth_, which occurs three times in the Bible,[1831] ought not to be attributed to spelt, as it is by Hebrew scholars.[1832] I imagined it was perhaps the allied form, _T. monococcum_, but neither is this grown in Egypt.

Spelt has no name in Sanskrit, nor in any modern Indian languages, nor in Persian,[1833] and therefore, of course, none in Chinese. European names, on the contrary, are numerous, and bear witness to an ancient cultivation, especially in the east of Europe. _Spelta_ in Saxon, whence the English name, and the French, _épeautre_; _Dinkel_ in modern German, _orkiss_ in Polish, _pobla_ in Russian,[1834] are names which seem to come from very different roots. In the south of Europe the names are rarer. There is a Spanish one, however, of Asturia, _escandia_,[1835] but I know of none in Basque.

History, and especially philology, point to an origin in eastern temperate Europe and the neighbouring countries of Asia. We have to discover whether the plant has been found wild.

Olivier,[1836] in a passage already quoted, says that he several times found it in Mesopotamia, in particular upon the right bank of the Euphrates, north of Anah, in places unfit for cultivation. Another botanist, André Michaux, saw it in 1783, near Hamadan, a town in the temperate region of Persia. Dureau de la Malle says that he sent some grains of it to Bosc, who sowed them at Paris and obtained the common spelt; but this seems to me doubtful, for Lamarck, in 1786,[1837] and Bosc himself, in the _Dictionnaire d’Agriculture_, article _Épeautre_ (spelt), published in 1809, says not a word of this. The herbariums of the Paris Museum contain no specimens of the cereals mentioned by Olivier.

There is, as we have seen, much uncertainty as to the origin of the species as a wild plant. This leads me to attribute more importance to the hypothesis that spelt is derived by cultivation from the common wheat, or from an intermediate form at some not very early prehistoric time. The experiments of H. Vilmorin[1838] support this theory, for cross fertilizations of the spelt by the downy white wheat, and _vice versâ_, yield “hybrids whose fertility is complete, with a mixture of the characters of both parents, those of the spelt preponderating.”

+2. Starch Wheat+—_Triticum dicoccum_, Schrank; _Triticum amyleum_, Seringe.

This form (_Emmer_, or _Aemer_ in German), cultivated for starch chiefly in Switzerland, resists a hard winter. It contains two grains in each little ear, like the true spelt.

Heer[1839] attributes to a variety of _T. dicoccum_ an ear found in a bad state of preservation in the lake-dwellings of Wangen, Switzerland. Messicommer has since found some at Robenhausen.

It has never been found wild; and the rarity of common names is remarkable. These two circumstances, and the slight value of the botanical characters which serve to distinguish it from _Tr. spelta_, lead to the conclusion that it is an ancient cultivated variety of the latter.

+3. One-grained Wheat+—_Triticum monococcum_, Linnæus.

The one-grained wheat, or little spelt, _Einkorn_ in German, is distinguished from the two preceding by a single seed in the little ear, and by other characters which lead the majority of botanists to consider it as a really distinct species. The experiments of H. Vilmorin confirm this opinion so far, for he has not yet succeeded in crossing _T. monococcum_ with other spelts or wheats. This may be due, as he says himself, to some detail in the manner of operating. He intends to renew his attempts, and may perhaps succeed. [In the _Bulletin de la Société Botanique de France_, 1883, p. 62, Mr. Vilmorin says that he has not met with better success in the third and fourth years in his attempts at crossing _T. monococcum_ with other species. He intends to make the experiment with _T. bœoticum_, Boissier, wild in Servia, of which I sent him some seeds gathered by Pancic. As this species is supposed to be the original stock of _T. monococcum_, the experiment is an interesting one.—AUTHOR’S NOTE, 1884.] In the mean time let us see whether this form of spelt has been long in cultivation, and if it has anywhere been found growing wild.

The one-grained wheat thrives in the poorest and most stony soil. It is not very productive, but yields excellent meal. It is sown especially in mountainous districts, in Spain, France, and the east of Europe, but I do not find it mentioned in Barbary, Egypt, the East, or in India or China.

From some expressions it has been believed to be the _tiphai_ of Theophrastus.[1840] It is easier to invoke Dioscorides,[1841] for he distinguishes two kinds of _zeia_, one with two seeds, another with only one. The latter would be the one-grained wheat. Nothing proves that it was commonly cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. Their modern descendants do not sow it.[1842] There are no Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names. I suggested formerly that the Hebrew word _kussemeth_ might apply to this species, but this hypothesis now seems to me difficult to maintain.

Marschall Bieberstein[1843] mentions _Triticum monococcum_, or a variety of it, growing wild in the Crimea and the eastern Caucasus, but no botanist has confirmed this assertion. Steven,[1844] who lived in the Crimea, declares that he never saw the species except cultivated by the Tartars. On the other hand, the plant which Balansa gathered in a wild state near Mount Sipylus, in Anatolia, is _T. monococcum_, according to J. Gay,[1845] who takes with this form _Triticum bœoticum_, Boissier, which grows wild in the plains of Bœotia[1846] and in Servia.[1847]

Admitting these facts, _T. monococcum_ is a native of Servia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and as the attempts to cross it with other spelts or wheats have not been successful, it is rightly termed a species in the Linnæan sense.

The separation of wheat with free grains from spelt must have taken place before all history, perhaps before the beginning of agriculture. Wheat must have appeared first in Asia, and then spelt, probably in Eastern Europe and Anatolia. Lastly, among spelts _T. monococcum_ seems to be the most ancient form, from which the others have gradually developed in several thousand years of cultivation and selection.

+Two-rowed Barley+—_Hordeum distichon_, Linnæus.

Barley is among the most ancient of cultivated plants. As all its forms resemble each other in nature and uses, we must not expect to find in ancient authors and in common names that precision which would enable us to recognize the species admitted by botanists. In many cases the name barley has been taken in a vague or generic sense. This is a difficulty which we must take into account. For instance, the expression of the Old Testament, of Berosus, of Moses of Chorene, Pausanias, Marco Polo, and more recently of Olivier, indicating “wild and cultivated barley” in a given country, prove nothing, because we do not know to which species they refer. There is the same obscurity in China. Dr. Bretschneider says[1848] that, according to a work published in the year A.D. 100, the Chinese cultivated barley, but he does not specify the kind. At the extreme west of the old world the Guanchos also cultivated a barley, of which we know the name but not the species.

The common variety of the two-rowed barley, in which the husk remains attached to the ripened grain, has been found wild in Western Asia, in Arabia Petrea,[1849] near Mount Sinai,[1850] in the ruins of Persepolis,[1851] near the Caspian Sea,[1852] between Lenkoran and Baku, in the desert of Chirvan and Awhasia, to the south of the Caucasus,[1853] and in Turcomania.[1854] No author mentions it in Greece, Egypt, or to the east of Persia. Willdenow[1855] indicates it at Samara, in the south-east of Russia; but more recent authors do not confirm this. Its modern area is, therefore, from the Red Sea to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.

Hence this barley should be one of the forms cultivated by Semitic and Turanian peoples. Yet it has not been found in Egyptian monuments. It seems that the Aryans must have known it, but I find no proof in vernacular names or in history.

Theophrastus[1856] speaks of the two-rowed barley. The lake-dwellers of Eastern Switzerland cultivated it before they possessed metals,[1857] but the six-rowed barley was more common among them.

The variety in which the grain is bare at maturity (_H. distichon nudum_, Linnæus), which in France has all sorts of absurd names, _orge à café_, _orge du Pérou_ (coffee barley, Peruvian barley), has never been found wild.

The fan-shaped barley (_Hordeum Zeocriton_, Linnæus) seems to me to be a cultivated form of the two-rowed barley. It is not known in a wild state, nor has it been found in Egyptian monuments, nor the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy.

+Common Barley+—_Hordeum vulgare_, Linnæus.

The common barley with four rows of grain is mentioned by Theophrastus,[1858] but it seems to have been less cultivated in antiquity than that with two rows, and considerably less than that with six rows. It has not been found in Egyptian monuments, nor in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy.

Willdenow[1859] says that it grows in Sicily and in the south-east of Russia, at Samara, but the modern floras of these two countries do not confirm this. We do not know what species of barley it was that Olivier saw growing wild in Mesopotamia; consequently the common barley has not yet been found certainly wild.

The multitude of common names which are attributed to it prove nothing as to its origin, for in most cases it is impossible to know if they are names of barley in general, or of a particular kind of barley cultivated in a given country.

+Six-rowed Barley+—_Hordeum hexastichon_, Linnæus.

This was the species most commonly cultivated in antiquity. Not only is it mentioned by Greek authors, but it has also been found in the earliest Egyptian monuments,[1860] and in the remains of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland (age of stone), of Italy, and of Savoy (age of bronze).[1861] Heer has even distinguished two varieties of the species formerly cultivated in Switzerland. One of them answers to the six-rowed barley represented on the medals of Metapontis, a town in the south of Italy, six centuries before Christ.

According to Roxburgh,[1862] it was the only kind of barley grown in India at the end of the last century. He attributes to it the Sanskrit name _yuva_, which has become _juba_ in Bengali. Adolphe Pictet[1863] has carefully studied the names in Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages which answer to the generic name barley, but he has not been able to go into the details of each species.

The six-rowed barley has not been seen in the conditions of a wild plant, of which the species has been determined by a botanist. I have not found it in Boissier’s herbarium, which is so rich in Eastern plants. It is possible that the wild barleys mentioned by ancient authors and by Olivier were _Hordeum hexastichon_, but there is no proof of this.

_On Barleys in general._

We have seen that the only form which is now found wild is the simplest, the least productive, _Hordeum distichon_, which was, like _H. hexastichon_, cultivated in prehistoric time. Perhaps _H. vulgare_ has not been so long in cultivation as the two others.

Two hypotheses may be drawn from these facts: 1. That the barleys with four and six rows were, in prehistoric agriculture anterior to that of the ancient Egyptians who built the monuments, derived from _H. distichon_. 2. The barleys with six and four ranks were species formerly wild, extinct since the historical epoch. It would be strange in this case that no trace of them has remained in the floras of the vast region comprised between India, the Black Sea, and Abyssinia, where we are nearly sure of their cultivation, at least of that of the six-ranked barley.

+Rye+—_Secale cereale_, Linnæus.

Rye has not been very long in cultivation, unless, perhaps, in Russia and Thrace. It has not been found in Egyptian monuments, and has no name in Semitic languages, even in the modern ones, nor in Sanskrit and the modern Indian languages derived from Sanskrit. These facts agree with the circumstance that rye thrives better in northern than in southern countries, where it is not usually cultivated in modern times. Dr. Bretschneider[1864] thinks it is unknown to Chinese agriculture. He doubts the contrary assertion of a modern writer, and remarks that the name of a cereal mentioned in the memoirs of the Emperor Kanghi, which may be supposed to be this species, signifies Russian wheat. Now rye, he says, is much cultivated in Siberia. There is no mention of it in Japanese floras.

The ancient Greeks did not know it. The first author who mentions it in the Roman empire is Pliny,[1865] who speaks of the _secale_ cultivated at Turin at the foot of the Alps, under the name of _Asia_. Galen,[1866] born in A.D. 131, had seen it cultivated in Thrace and Macedonia under the name _briza_. Its cultivation does not seem ancient, at least in Italy, for no trace of rye has been found in the remains of the lake-dwellings of the north of that country, or of Switzerland and Savoy, even of the age of bronze. Jetteles found remains of rye near Olmutz, together with instruments of bronze, and Heer,[1867] who saw the specimens, mentions others of the Roman epoch in Switzerland.

Failing archæological proofs, European languages show an early knowledge of rye in German, Keltic, and Slavonic countries. The principal names, according to Adolphe Pictet,[1868] belong to the peoples of the north of Europe: Anglo-Saxon, _ryge_, _rig_; Scandinavian, _rûgr_; Old High German, _roggo_; Ancient Slav, _ruji_, _roji_; Polish, _rez_; Illyrian, _raz_, etc. The origin of this name must date, he says, from an epoch previous to the separation of the Teutons from the Lithuano-Slavs. The word _secale_ of the Latins recurs in a similar form among the Bretons, _segal_, and the Basques, _cekela_, _zekhalea_; but it is not known whether the Latins borrowed it from the Gauls and Iberians, or whether, conversely, the latter took the name from the Romans. This second hypothesis appears to be the more probable of the two, since the Cisalpine Gauls of Pliny’s time had quite a different name. I also find mentioned a Tartar name, _aresch_,[1869] and an Ossete name, _syl_, _sil_,[1870] which points to an ancient cultivation to the east of Europe.

Thus historical and philological data show that the species probably had its origin in the countries north of the Danube, and that its cultivation is hardly earlier than the Christian era in the Roman empire, but perhaps more ancient in Russia and Tartary.

The indication of wild rye given by several authors should scarcely ever be accepted, for it has often happened that _Secale cereale_ has been confounded with perennial species, or with others of which the ear is easily broken, which modern botanists have rightly distinguished.[1871] Many mistakes which thus arose have been cleared up by an examination of original specimens. Others may be suspected. Thus I do not know what to think of the assertions of L. Ross, who said he had found rye growing wild in several parts of Anatolia,[1872] and of the Russian traveller Ssaewerzoff, who said he saw it in Turkestan.[1873] The latter fact is probable enough, but it is not said that any botanist verified the species. Kunth[1874] had previously mentioned it in “the desert between the Black Sea and the Caspian,” but he does not say on what authority of traveller or of specimens. Boissier’s herbarium has shown me no wild _Secale cereale_, but it has persuaded me that another species of rye might easily be mistaken for this one, and that assertions require to be carefully verified.