Origin of Cultivated Plants

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 - Royle, Ill. Himal., p. 317.] 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 - Gmelin, Flora Sibirica, iii. p. 64; Ledebour, Fl. Rossica, iii. p. 576.] but Russian botanists have not found it further east, in the basin of the river Amur.[1758 - Maximowicz, Primitiæ; Regel, Opit. Flori, etc.; Schmidt, Reisen in Amur, do not mention it.]

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 - Royle, Ill. Himal., p. 317; Madden, Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin., v. p. 118.] and in China.[1760 - Roth, Catalecta Botanica, i. p. 48.] 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 - Don, Prodr. Fl. Nepal., p. 74.] 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 - Molina, Hist. Nat. du Chili, p. 101.] The latter was regarded by Moquin[1763 - Moquin, in De Candolle, Prodromus, xiii. part 1, p. 67.] 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 - A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Rais., p. 952.] 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 - Bon Jardinier, 1880, p. 562.]

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 - Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 2, vol. iii. p. 609; Wight, Icones, pl. 720; Aitchison, Catalogue of Punjab Plants, p. 130.] Fields of this species, of a red or golden colour, produce a beautiful effect.[1767 - Madden, Trans. Edin. Bot. Soc., v. p. 118.] 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 - Don, Prodr. Fl. Nepal, p. 76.] A variety or allied species, Amarantus anardana, Wallich,[1769 - Wallich, List, No. 6903; Moquin, in D. C., Prodr., xiii. sect. 2, p. 256.] 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 - For further details, see my article in Prodromus, vol. xvi. part 2, p. 114; and Boissier, Flora Orientalis, iv. p. 1175.] 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 - Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. xix. c. 23.] 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 - Olivier de Serres, Théâtre de l’Agric., p. 114.] in the sixteenth century, praises the chestnuts Sardonne and Tuscane, which produced the single-kernelled fruit called the Lyons marron.[1773 - Lyons marrons now come chiefly from Dauphiné and Vivarais. Some are also obtained from Luc in the department of Var (Gasparin, Traité d’Agric., iv. p. 744).] He considered that these varieties came from Italy, and Targioni[1774 - Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 180.] 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 - Vilmorin, Essai d’un Catalogue Méthodique et Synonymique des Froments, Paris, 1850.] 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 - The best drawings of the different kinds of wheat may be found in Metzger’s Europæische Cerealien, in folio, Heidelberg, 1824; and in Host. Graminæ, in folio, vol. iii.]

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 - Tessier, Dict. d’Agric., vi. p. 198.] “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 - Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Consid. sur les Céréales, 1 vol. in 8vo, p. 219.] 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 - These questions have been discussed with learning and judgment by four authors: Link, Ueber die ältere Geschichte der Getreide Arten, in Abhandl. der Berlin Akad., 1816, vol. xvii. p. 122; 1826, p. 67; and in Die Urwelt und das Alterthum, 2nd edit., Berlin, 1834, p. 399; Reynier, Économie des Celtes et des Germains, 1818, p. 417; Dureau de la Malle, Ann. des Sciences Nat., vol. ix. 1826; and Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Consid. sur les Céréales, 1812, part i. p. 52.] The earliest lake-dwellings of Western Switzerland cultivated a small-grained wheat, which Heer[1780 - Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 13, pl. 1, figs. 14-18.] 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 - Sordelli, Sulle piante della torbiera di Lagozza, p. 31.] 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 - Heer, ibid.; Sordelli, ibid.] A third intermediate variety has been discovered at Aggtelek in Hungary, cultivated in the stone age.[1783 - Nyari, quoted by Sordelli, ibid.] 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 - Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 7 and 8.] 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 - Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc.; Ad. Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Euro., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 328; Rosenmüller, Bibl. Naturgesch., i. p. 77; Pickering, Chronol. Arrang., p. 78; Webb and Berthelot, Canaries, Ethnogr., p. 187; D’Abadie, Notes MSS. sur les Noms Basques; De Charencey, Recherches sur les Noms Basques, in Actes Soc. Philolog., March, 1869.] and several Finn, Tartar, and Turkish names, etc.,[1786 - Nemnich, Lexicon, p. 1492.] 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 - G. Syncelli, Chronogr., fol. 1652, p. 28.]) 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 - Strabo, edit. 1707, vol. ii. p. 1017.] 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 - Ibid., vol. i. p. 124; ii. p. 776.] 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 - Lib. ix. v. 109.] 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 - Diodorus, Terasson’s trans., ii. pp. 186, 190.] 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 - Bretschneider, ibid., p. 15.] 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 - Parlatore, Fl. Ital., i. pp. 46, 568. His assertion is the more worthy of attention that he was a Sicilian.] It sometimes escapes from cultivation, but it does not persist indefinitely.[1794 - Strobl, in Flora, 1880, p. 348.] The plant which the inhabitants call wild wheat, Frumentu sarvaggiu, which covers uncultivated ground, is Ægilops ovata, according to Inzenga.[1795 - Inzenga, Annali Agric. Sicil.]

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 - Bull. de la Soc. Bot. de France, 1854, p. 108.] 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 - J. Gay, Bull. Soc. Bot. de France, 1860, p. 30.] Olivier,[1798 - Olivier, Voy. dans l’Emp. Othoman (1807), vol. iii. p. 460.] 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 - Linnæus, Sp. Plant., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 127.] 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 - Bunge, Bull. Soc. Bot. France, 1860, p. 29.] 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 - De Candolle, Physiologie Botanique, ii. p. 696.] that he recognized this wheat amongst seeds taken from the sarcophagi of ancient mummies, but he had not seen the ears. Unger[1802 - Unger, Die Pflanzen des Alten Ægyptens, p. 31.] 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 - See Rosenmüller, Bibl. Naturgesch.; and Löw, Aramaische Pflanzen Namen, 1881.] 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 - Delile, Pl. Cult, en Égypte, p. 3; Fl. Ægypt. Illus., p. 5.] attributes to the species belong perhaps to other varieties of wheat. There is no Berber name.[1805 - Dict. Fr. – Berb., published by the Government.] 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 - Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 5, fig. 4; p. 52, fig. 20.] 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 - Messicommer, in Flora, 1869, p. 320.] Strœbel and Pigorini said they found wheat with grano grosso duro (T. turgidum), in the lake-dwellings of Parmesan.[1808 - Quoted from Sordelli, Notizie sull. Lagozza, p. 32.] For the rest, Heer[1809 - Heer, ubi supra, p. 50.] 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 - Heldreich, Die Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 5.] the great wheat is of modern introduction into Greece. Pliny[1811 - Pliny, Hist., lib. xviii. cap. 10.] 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 - Koch, Linnæa, xxi. p. 427.] 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 - Letter from Ascherson, 1881.]

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 - Dict. MS. of Vernacular Names.] and none are derived from the Arab name quemah used in Algeria[1815 - Debeaux, Catal. des Plan. de Boghar, p. 110.] and Egypt.[1816 - Delile says (ubi supra) that wheat is called qamh, and a red variety qamh-ahmar.] 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 - Nemnich, Lexicon, p. 1488.] 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 - Alefeld, Bot. Zeitung, 1865, p. 9.] 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 - H. Vilmorin, Bull. Soc. Bot. de France, 1881, p. 356.] 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 - Journal, Flora, 1835, p. 4.] 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 - See the plates of Metzger and Host, in the works previously quoted.]

Louis Vilmorin,[1822 - Essai d’un Catal. Method. des Froments, Paris, 1850.] in imitation of Seringe’s excellent work on cereals,[1823 - Seringe, Monogr. des Céré. de la Suisse, in 8vo, Berne, 1818.] 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 - Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 307; Lenz, Bot. der Alten, p. 257.] that the Greeks first called spelt olyra, afterwards zeia, names which we find in Herodotus and Homer. Dioscorides[1825 - Dioscorides, Mat. Med., ii., 111-115.] 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 - Pliny, Hist., lib. xviii. cap. 7; Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 6.] 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 - Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 6; Unger, Pflanzen des Alten Ægyptens, p. 32.] 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 - Delile, Pl. Cult, en Égypte, p. 5.] 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 - Reynier, Écon. des Égyptiens, p. 337; Dureau de la Malle, Ann. Sc. Nat., ix. p. 72; Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzäh. Tr. spelta of Forskal is not admitted by any subsequent author.] nor has it been found in the ancient monuments. This is what led me to suppose[1830 - Géogr. Bot. Rais., p. 933.] that the Hebrew word kussemeth, which occurs three times in the Bible,[1831 - Exod. ix. 32; Isa. xxviii. 25; Ezek. iv. 9.] ought not to be attributed to spelt, as it is by Hebrew scholars.[1832 - Rosenmüller, Bibl. Alterth., iv. p. 83; Second, Trans, of Old Test., 1874.] 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 - Ad. Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 348.] 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 - Ad. Pictet, ibid.; Nemnich., Lexicon.] 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 - Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., i. p. 107.] 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.