It will be noticed that in the passages above cited not only the vine but the wild corn also makes its appearance. It is clear, therefore, that any argument based on analogy or resemblance to these features of the Fortunate Islands is quite inconclusive. Nevertheless the case for the vines is, it must be admitted, considerably stronger than that for the corn. In the first place, no mention of the latter commodity occurs in the Flatey version, if the reference to ‘a wooden corn-barn’ be explicable on another hypothesis, as I have endeavoured to indicate in treating of Thorvald’s voyage. In the second place, most of the later explorers seem to have meant by ‘wild corn’ something in the nature of lyme-grass (_Arundo arenaria_). But there is a difficulty in accepting this plant as the ‘wild wheat’ of the Icelanders, since lyme-grass, under the name of ‘melur’, was well known to this people; a reference to the method employed in comparatively recent times in preparing flour from it will be found in Troil’s _Letters on Iceland_ at page 105. It is true that Professor Fernald of Boston, in his paper on the plants of Wineland, identifies not only the corn, but the vines and the mösur wood, with commodities known to the Norsemen in their own countries, but this has always seemed to me to add to the already insuperable difficulties in the way of accepting his theories, to which I shall have occasion to revert later on. All the same, I am inclined to think that something in the nature of lyme-grass may be indicated by the wild corn, and if so perhaps we may here trace to some extent the influence of the classical legends on which Dr. Nansen lays stress. One may imagine, without much straining of probability, that on hearing of the vines learned people would ask leading questions as to the existence of corn, and so the lyme-grass, hitherto considered, as we see from the Flatey Book, to be comparatively unimportant, might have reappeared under a new name. One can certainly imagine the schoolmaster, Adam of Bremen, in his cross-examination of the Danes from whom his information was derived, on hearing of the vines, making some inquiry as to the existence of some sort of wild corn, and being quite truthfully told that it did exist.