Plants"), "as the result of all the most reliable evidence that none of
the Ceralia--wheat, rye, barley, and oats--exist or have existed truly
wild in their present state." In the Stone Age of Europe five varieties
of wheat and three of barley were cultivated. (Darwin, "Animals and
Plants," vol. i., p. 382.) He says that it may be inferred, from the
presence in the lake habitations of Switzerland of a variety of wheat
known as the Egyptian wheat, and from the nature of the weeds that grew
among their crops, "that the lake inhabitants either still kept up
commercial intercourse with some southern people, or had originally
proceeded as colonists from the south." I should argue that they were
colonists from the land where wheat and barley were first domesticated,
to wit, Atlantis. And when the Bronze Age came, we find oats and rye
making their appearance with the weapons of bronze, together with a
peculiar kind of pea. Darwin concludes (Ibid., vol. i., p. 385) that
wheat, barley, rye, and oats were either descended from ten or fifteen
distinct species, "most of which are now unknown or extinct," or from
four or eight species closely resembling our present forms, or so
"widely different as to escape identification;" in which latter case, he
says, "man must have cultivated the cereals at an enormously remote
period," and at that time practised "some degree of selection."

Rawlinson ("Ancient Monarchies," vol. i., p. 578) expresses the opinion
that the ancient Assyrians possessed the pineapple. "The representation
on the monuments is so exact that I can scarcely doubt the pineapple
being intended." (See Layard's "Nineveh and Babylon," p. 338.) The
pineapple (Bromelia ananassa) is supposed to be of American origin, and
unknown to Europe before the time of Columbus; and yet, apart from the
revelations of the Assyrian monuments, there has been some dispute upon
this point. ("Amer. Cyclop.," vol. xiii., p. .528.)