There is no grain more prolific than wheat, Nature having bestowed upon it this quality, as being the substance which she destined for the principal nutriment of man. A modius of wheat, if the soil is favourable, as at Byzacium,[199] a champaign district of Africa, will yield as much as one hundred and fifty[200] modii of grain. The procurator of the late Emperor Augustus sent him from that place—a fact almost beyond belief—little short of four hundred shoots all springing from a single grain; and we have still in existence his letters on the subject. In a similar manner, too, the procurator of Nero sent him three hundred and sixty stalks all issuing from a single grain.[201] The plains of Leontium in Sicily, and other places in that island, as well as the whole of Bætica, and Egypt more particularly, yield produce a hundred-fold. The most prolific kinds of wheat are the ramose wheat,[202] and that known as the “hundred-grain”[203] wheat. Before now, as many as one hundred beans, too, have been found on a single stalk. CHAP. 22.—SESAME. ERYSIMUM, OR IRIO. HORMINUM. We have spoken[204] of sesame, millet, and panic as belonging to the summer grains. Sesame[205] comes from India, where they extract an oil from it; the colour of its grain is white. Similar in appearance to this is the erysimum of Asia and Greece, and indeed it would be identical with it were it not that the grain is better filled.[206] It is the same grain that is known among us as “irio;” and strictly speaking, ought rather to be classed among the medicaments than the cereals. Of the same nature, too, is the plant called “horminum”[207] by the Greeks, though resembling cummin[208] in appearance; it is sown at the same time as sesame: no animal will eat either this or irio while green. CHAP. 23.—THE MODE OF GRINDING CORN.