In China it is one of the five plants which the emperor sows each year in a public ceremony, according to the command issued by Chin-nong 2700 B.C.[1917] The common name is _siao mi_ (little seed), the more ancient name being _ku_; but the latter seems to be applied also to a very different species.[1918] Pickering says he recognized it in two ancient Egyptian drawings, and that it is now cultivated in Egypt[1919] under the name _dokhn_; but that is the name of _Panicum miliaceum_. It is, therefore, very doubtful that the ancient Egyptians cultivated it. It has been found among the remains of the Swiss lake-dwellings of the stone epoch, and therefore _à fortiori_ among the lake-dwellers of the subsequent epoch in Savoy.[1920] The ancient Greeks and Latins did not mention it, or at least it has not been possible to certify it from what they say of several panicums and millets. In our own day the species is rarely cultivated in the south of Europe, not at all in Greece,[1921] for instance, and I do not find it indicated in Egypt, but it is common in Southern Asia.[1922] The Sanskrit names _kungû_ and _priyungû_, of which the first is retained in Bengali,[1923] are attributed to this species. Piddington mentions several other names in Indian languages in his _Index_. Ainslie[1924] gives a Persian name, _arzun_, and an Arabic name; but the latter is commonly attributed to _Panicum miliaceum_. There is no Hebrew name, and the plant is not mentioned in botanical works upon Egypt and Arabia. The European names have no historical value. They are not original, and commonly refer to the transmission of the species or to its cultivation in a given country. The specific name, _italicum_, is an absurd example, the plant being rarely cultivated and never wild in Italy. Rumphius says it is wild in the Sunda Isles, but not very positively.[1925] Linnæus probably started from this basis to exaggerate and even promulgate an error, saying, “inhabits the Indies.”[1926] It certainly does not come from the West Indies; and further, Roxburgh asserts that he never saw it wild in India. The Graminæ have not yet appeared in Sir Joseph Hookers flora; but Aitchison[1927] gives the species as only cultivated in the north-west of India. The Australian plant which Robert Brown said belonged to this species belongs to another.[1928] _P. italicum_ appears to be wild in Japan, at least in the form called _germanica_ by different authors,[1929] and the Chinese consider the five cereals of the annual ceremony to be natives of their country. Yet Bunge, in the north of China, and Maximowicz in the basin of the river Amur, only saw the species cultivated on a large scale, in the form of the _germanica_ variety.[1930] In Persia,[1931] the Caucasus Mountains, and Europe, I only find in floras the plant indicated as cultivated, or escaped sometimes from cultivation on rubbish-heaps, waysides, waste ground, etc.[1932]