In contradistinction to views previously advanced, he believes that the original Wiros were settled agriculturists and not nomad herdsmen.[446] He bases this conclusion, apparently, on the fact that they knew of corn. A careful study of all the evidence on this subject collected by Schrader[447] convinces me, however, that it is far from certain that the undivided Wiros were acquainted with cultivated grain, for the terms used, few if any of which run through all the languages, may well apply to wild grain, and oats grow wild on the Russian steppe,[448] and may well have been used as food for man and beast. Moreover it is not an unknown thing for nomad people to grow scratch crops of grain. Such crops of barley I have myself seen grown by nomad Bedawin in the clay deserts behind Alexandria. The steppe-folk, too, like most nomads, were probably in the habit of making occasional raids on the settled lands on their margin, and we have actual evidence that this occurred. We know also that settled cultivators were living both at Tripolje and at Anau on the edge of the steppe. The original Wiro word for grain might well be the name they used for this kind of booty, nor need we exclude the possibility that when times were hard they acquired grain by trade from their settled neighbours, as Abraham, a nomad steppe-man, purchased corn from Egypt. The argument from the words for grain seems indecisive, and the balance of the evidence cited by Schrader seems in favour of a nomad existence. Dr. Giles feels that “the close similarity between the various languages spoken by them would lead us to infer that they must have lived for long in a severely circumscribed area, so that their peculiarities developed for many generations in common.”[449] This, as we have seen, was Cuno’s idea, and is an eminently sound conclusion. But Dr. Giles would see in this circumscribed area one surrounded with a ring of mountains, while Cuno thought that it demanded an extensive steppe. The difference between the two views seems to depend upon whether the Wiros were nomad or settled, and I have already given reasons for believing them to have been nomads. Dr. Giles objects to the steppe-cradle. He gives as his reason that this region has not on the whole the characteristics required by the conclusions drawn from linguistic palæontology;[450] on the other hand Schrader, who has studied this side of philology more exhaustively than most inquirers, believes that the conditions are fulfilled.[451] Neither argument is perhaps conclusive, and both deserve serious attention; the decision must rest upon evidence drawn from those other sciences which deal with the far past.