The six-rowed barley has not been seen in the conditions of a wild plant, of which the species has been determined by a botanist. I have not found it in Boissier’s herbarium, which is so rich in Eastern plants. It is possible that the wild barleys mentioned by ancient authors and by Olivier were _Hordeum hexastichon_, but there is no proof of this. _On Barleys in general._ We have seen that the only form which is now found wild is the simplest, the least productive, _Hordeum distichon_, which was, like _H. hexastichon_, cultivated in prehistoric time. Perhaps _H. vulgare_ has not been so long in cultivation as the two others. Two hypotheses may be drawn from these facts: 1. That the barleys with four and six rows were, in prehistoric agriculture anterior to that of the ancient Egyptians who built the monuments, derived from _H. distichon_. 2. The barleys with six and four ranks were species formerly wild, extinct since the historical epoch. It would be strange in this case that no trace of them has remained in the floras of the vast region comprised between India, the Black Sea, and Abyssinia, where we are nearly sure of their cultivation, at least of that of the six-ranked barley. +Rye+—_Secale cereale_, Linnæus. Rye has not been very long in cultivation, unless, perhaps, in Russia and Thrace. It has not been found in Egyptian monuments, and has no name in Semitic languages, even in the modern ones, nor in Sanskrit and the modern Indian languages derived from Sanskrit. These facts agree with the circumstance that rye thrives better in northern than in southern countries, where it is not usually cultivated in modern times. Dr. Bretschneider[1864] thinks it is unknown to Chinese agriculture. He doubts the contrary assertion of a modern writer, and remarks that the name of a cereal mentioned in the memoirs of the Emperor Kanghi, which may be supposed to be this species, signifies Russian wheat. Now rye, he says, is much cultivated in Siberia. There is no mention of it in Japanese floras. The ancient Greeks did not know it. The first author who mentions it in the Roman empire is Pliny,[1865] who speaks of the _secale_ cultivated at Turin at the foot of the Alps, under the name of _Asia_. Galen,[1866] born in A.D. 131, had seen it cultivated in Thrace and Macedonia under the name _briza_. Its cultivation does not seem ancient, at least in Italy, for no trace of rye has been found in the remains of the lake-dwellings of the north of that country, or of Switzerland and Savoy, even of the age of bronze. Jetteles found remains of rye near Olmutz, together with instruments of bronze, and Heer,[1867] who saw the specimens, mentions others of the Roman epoch in Switzerland.