BOTANICAL STUDY AND HISTORY. 245
chromosomes is Triticum vulgare, or Bread Wheat, the cultiva-
tion of which in the Old World extends from Ireland to Japan
and from India to Siberia and Scandinavia, but does not occur
in Arabia, and in Africa is confined to Barbary and Lower
Egypt. There is no evidence that T. vulgare ever found its way
into Ancient Egypt ; there is no indication that it was cultivated
in Europe during Neolithic days. It appears for the first time,
along with T. compactum, in Bronze Age deposits : in the Iron
Age, from which Club Wheat disappeared, Bread Wheat was
the only rival in Europe, outside the limits of Mediterranean
culture, to Emmer.
We have it on the authority of Herodotus that in the time
of Cambyses the staple food of the Persians was wheat. Mr.
Laufer has discussed the implications of this statement so far as
intercourse between classical China and Irania are concerned.
In considering its implications so far as concerns intercourse
between the Medes and Persians on the one hand and the peoples
of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia on the other, we have to bear
in mind that Emmer was the staple cereal of the latter and that
even now Emmer is in Persia only an insignificant crop, intro-
duced, perhaps recently, by Armenian refugees. We have
also to bear in mind that of the two possible derivates from
T. sphaerococcum, Club Wheat and Bread Wheat, the former
did not enter Persia : the wheat which formed the staple food
of the Persians should therefore have been T. vulgare. If
Emmer failed to penetrate into ancient Iran from Asia Minor
and Chaldea, Bread Wheat must have succeeded in passing
from Persia to Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. It is known that
the troops from Upper India who brought Bengal for a time
under Mogul sway, established a wheat-cultivation which still
goes on, under conditions more suitable for rice than wheat, in
a narrow belt that crosses the Lower Gangetic Plain. At an
earlier date the Medo-Persian soldiery, by whose efforts the
various kingdoms of Asia Minor were converted into satrapies
of the Great King, carried with them the cultivation of the
"race' of wheat which was their staple food. In this case the
conditions proved quite suitable for Bread Wheat cultivation.
From Ionia various varieties of Bread Wheat found their way
to Greece ; from Greece they reached Sicily, and from Sicily
they passed to Rome. That these wheats of Persian origin