Now it is a very interesting fact that the almost certain ancestor of the cultivated wheat is at present living on the arid and rocky slopes of Mount Hermon. It is called _Triticum hermonis_, and it is varying notably to-day, as it did long ago when it gave rise to the emmer, which was cultivated in the Neolithic Age and is the ancestor of all our ordinary wheats. We must think of Neolithic man noticing the big seeds of this Hermon grass, gathering some of the heads, breaking the brittle spikelet-bearing axis in his fingers, knocking off the rough awns or bruising the spikelets in his hand till the glumes or chaff separated off and could be blown away, chewing a mouthful of the seeds--and resolving to sow and sow again. That was the beginning of a long story, in the course of which man took advantage of the numerous variations that cropped up in this sporting stock and established one successful race after another on his fields. Virgil refers in the "Georgics" to the gathering of the largest and fullest ears of wheat in order to get good seed for another sowing, but it was not till the first quarter of the nineteenth century that the great step was taken, by men like Patrick Sheriff of Haddington, of deliberately selecting individual ears of great excellence and segregating their progeny from mingling with mediocre stock. This is the method which has been followed with remarkable success in modern times. One of the factors that assisted the Allies in overcoming the food crisis in the darkest period of the war was the virtue of Marquis Wheat, a very prolific, early ripening, hard red spring wheat with excellent milling and baking qualities. It is now the dominant spring wheat in Canada and the United States, and it has enormously increased the real wealth of the world in the last ten years (1921). Now our point is simply that this Marquis Wheat is a fine example of evolution going on. In 1917 upwards of 250,000,000 bushels of this wheat were raised in North America, and in 1918 upwards of 300,000,000 bushels; yet the whole originated from a single grain planted in an experimental plot at Ottawa by Dr. Charles E. Saunders so recently as the spring of 1903. [Illustration: THE WALKING-FISH OR MUD-SKIPPER (PERIOPHTHALMUS), COMMON AT THE MOUTHS OF RIVERS IN TROPICAL AFRICA, ASIA, AND NORTH-WEST AUSTRALIA It skips about by means of its strong pectoral fins on the mud-flats; it jumps from stone to stone hunting small shore-animals; it climbs up the roots of the mangrove-trees. The close-set eyes protrude greatly and are very mobile. The tail seems to help in respiration.] [Illustration: _Photo: "The Times."_ THE AUSTRALIAN MORE-PORK OR PODARGUS A bird with a frog-like mouth, allied to the British Nightjar. Now in the London Zoological Gardens.