244 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
is, like the present culture of the Locular or Einkorn in Europe.
"a relic of the past."
What, however, is of equal interest is the fact that grains
of wheat, equally small and equally spherical, have been found
alike in Neolithic and in Bronze Age deposits all over Europe
from Hungary to Spain and from Italy to Sweden ; also that
in one Hungarian Neolithic deposit were found grains equally
small but narrowly pointed instead of rounded at the tip ; some
authorities, who believe that the spikelets of this wheat probably
bore only one grain, regard it as representing an extinct ' race '
older even than T. sphaerococcum. The fact that in Neolithic
Europe both a wheat whose original home must have been
Asia Minor or Greece, and another wheat which is now a "relic
"of the past" in Persia and India, were in cultivation simul-
taneously, lends added force to the warning note Mr. Warren
sounded here three weeks ago. He supplied us with reason to
think that phases in Palaeolithic handicraft, which we have
become disposed to consider successive, may really have been
collateral ; we may do well to follow his example and retain
an open mind as regards the time-element in Neolithic activities
too.
Nearest in its botanical characters to this 'race' with small
spherical grain comes Triticum compactum, or Club Wheat : by
its history it does so too. The only Neolithic deposits in which
its more elongated oval grains have been found along with the
spherical grains of the earlier race are those of Switzerland and
Northern Italy. During the Bronze Age, there and elsewhere
in Europe, T. compactum replaced T. sphaerococcum, only to
disappear in its turn with the advent of the Iron Age. There
is no evidence that Club Wheat was known to the ancient
Egyptians, or that it was grown by the Greeks or the Romans.
The area to which Club Wheat appears to be practically limited
now, extends from the Euxine to Turkestan and from there
southward to Afghanistan and eastward to China and Manchuria :
it does not extend to Persia or India. It is grown also in the
Mediterranean region as well as in France and South Germany :
it used to be grown in England. But this European cultiva-
tion is a modern activity : it is neither 'a relic of the past"
nor a "legacy from Imperial Rome."
The most important 'race' of the 'series' with 21 pairs of