is common in the south of Europe, and in parts of Asia. Only very few years ago, all our varieties of wheat were comprised in two or more species of Triticum, and treated as original species of that genus. Now Triticum is a genus belonging to an entirely different order of plants to Ægilops, the last being placed in the Linnæan order Polygamia monœcia, the former in Triandria digynia. The ancient name Ægilops is derived from aix (αἴξ), a goat, and ops (ὄψ), the eye; the first term having reference to the beard of this kind of grass, and the second to the belief that it was useful in certain diseases of the eye. The Ægilops is common in Sicily, and from time immemorial has been used as an article of food. Its grain, however, in its wild state, is so small, as to appear worthless to those who are acquainted with the grain of cultivated wheat. It is, nevertheless, still gathered in some districts, where ancient custom still prevails, and after being tied up in bunches and dried in the sun, it is set fire to, and the light chaff burns so rapidly, that the grains are quickly freed from it, and only browned by the process, and when thus slightly roasted, it is considered a very agreeable food. M. Fabre, a French naturalist, residing at Agde, in the south of France, conceived the idea that it was from this Sicilian grass, and not from any of the wild Triticums, that our cultivated wheats originated. To put his theory to the proof he procured (some twenty years ago), seeds of the wild Ægilops, and the results of the very first crop, sown in rich ground, produced a remarkable difference in the lessening of the husks, and the enlargement of the grain. Seeds from the improved plants produced again an improved variety, and after about eight years’ careful culture of each successive generation in direct descent from the original Ægilops, good wheat was produced, presenting all those features which has caused the wheat to be classed as a Triticum, and placed in the same genus as Triticum repens, the common squitch or couch grass, which plant, or one closely allied, some had fancied to be the actual, though remote parent of wheat.
Between 1855 and 1859, the same experiment was repeated by Professor Buckman, at the Royal Agricultural College, with precisely the same results, the specimens produced in 1859 having made a very close approach in general appearance to an ear of bearded wheat. Thus the origin of wheat in the Sicilian and oriental grass Ægilops, which had been frequently suggested before, but always scouted as a chimerical idea by the prejudices of the elder botanists, was finally established as a proven fact.
That the original transformation by culture took place at a very remote period, we have evidence in the fact, that the Greeks and Romans attributed the gift of wheat to Ceres, its origin being more ancient than any records then existing, even in that distant age; and the ancient superstition concerning its divine origin in a supernatural manner, yet clings to our various kinds of corn in the term “cereals,” which is still applied to them, though the more expressive commercial term, “bread-stuffs,” is rapidly superseding it.
A knowledge of the origin of many other domesticated plants now lost, may be eventually recovered by similar methods to those described above. It has been shown of the grain of the cultivated wheat, that like the useful portions of many other plants, it is a monstrosity, but a most useful and important one. To prove that it is really a monstrosity, we have only to consider that the seed is more than ten times its natural bulk, while the husk is reduced to proportions far inferior to those of the typical plant.
The Avena fatua, a troublesome grass-weed, is the parent of our cultivated oat, which has been long well known; as on poor land, and with poor cultivation, the useful monstrosity of its enlarged seed soon degenerates, and the cultivated plant, in a few receding generations, reverts to its original form.
Rye is the cultivated form of Secale cereale. As is well known, it is a very inferior grain to wheat, and no amount of artificial treatment would ever improve it far beyond its present cultivated form. Its sole advantage is its hardiness, as it will grow well where wheat would perish. This is accounted for by the elevated situations in which it is found. The traveller Karl Koch informs us that it is found wild on the Crimean mountains at an elevation of 6000 feet.
Barley is a grass of the genus Hordeum, but which precise species is its wild parent, is at present unproved; Professor Lindley deeming our field barley to be, very probably, an improved and considerably changed form of Hordeum distichum.
It may be urged with some force that the artificial enlargement of the seed constitutes an improved development, and not a monstrosity; but do we not come to such a conclusion, biassed by the influence of the increased usefulness and value acquired? I think it must be allowed that such is the case, or else the enlarged livers of the Strasbourg geese, with which those delicious pies are made, must also be considered in the light of beautiful developments, instead of “useful monstrosities.”
H. Noel Humphreys.
