BOTANICAL STUDY AND HISTORY. 247
It is, however, one thing to know where these wheats
with 21 pairs of chromosomes originated, another to say
how they came into existence. We cannot deal in detail
with this vexed question now : it is a purely botanical
one, our present knowledge of which has been summed
up by Mr. Haldane in his statement that "a cytological study
of hybrids makes it highly probable that they" [the wheats
of the Bread Wheat Group] "contain one set of 14 chromo-
"somes from the genus Aegilops, and originated from a cross
"between a grass of this genus and one of the earlier types of
"wheat," without venturing to say yet what particular Aegilops
contributed the 7 pairs of chromosomes or what type of wheat
contributed the remaining 14 pairs : all that the botanist can
tell the historian is that the 'races' of wheat with 21 pairs of
chromosomes have shared in the symbiosis with man, which,
as Mr. Haldane has reminded us, constitutes human society, as
long as the 'races' with 14 pairs and as long as the solitary
'race' with 7 pairs.
Some of you may ask whether the history of the effects of
man's activities and needs on the appearance and nature of
wheat has any bearing on the reference to this crop with which
all of us are most familiar : the parable of 'The Wheat and the
Tares' in the 13th chapter of St. Matthew.
The question is a legitimate one : many of us know already
that where our authorised version gives 'wheat,' the French
Testament gives 'ble,' and the German Testament gives
'Weizen,' the respective translators did not go behind the word
triticum used in the Vulgate, but that when we turn to the Greek
text we find that the word used there is not πυρός, which,
before the Gospel was written, had come to mean Bread Wheat,
but the word σîτος, which means 'corn' and might apply to
the grain of any cereal and certainly, in the mind of a Greek,
did include 'barley' as well as 'wheat' : all of us know that
'corn' in Scotland meant 'oats,' in Sweden meant 'rye,' to the
Pilgrim Fathers in New England meant' maize.' The translator
of the word σîτος in the Vulgate was therefore probably justified
in using triticum as its equivalent. By his day triticum had
become a more prevalent crop than far, just as, in Xenophon's
day in Greece, πυρός had become a more prevalent crop than
ζείαι : what had happened in Greece may well have happened
R