Grasses
91
"We happened to examine more closely a fragment of a jar from Yang Shao Tsun. It was unusually thick in the wall, porous and full of plant imprints. Two Swedish botanists, G. Edman and E. Söderberg, examined this small fragment and their examination led to the most important discovery in this field since the discovery in 1921 of the Yang Shao dwelling site. It could be shown with certainty that the plant imprints in this fragment were husks of cultivated rice (Oryza sativa). The discovery was in a high degree sensational not only because it sets back the history of rice an immense distance in time, but also because it points not to dry Central Asia, but to rainy Southern Asia, which is the homeland of rice.'
"
It thus looks as if we should have to give rice the pre-eminence in antiquity of all the cereals. Its home was probably the Burma-Siam region or perhaps Southern China, though Mrs. Arber does not shut out the possibility of tropical Africa. When did it first reach Europe? If its original home was Africa it possibly reached Europe in very early times. But if, as seems more probable, its original home was the monsoon area of Eastern Asia it probably did not reach Europe till Saracen times. Gibbon, however, gives quite another view. He says of the Roman marriage, "the contracting parties tasted a salt cake of far or rice, and this confarreation, which denoted the ancient food of Italy, (italics ours) seemed as an emblem of their mystic union of mind and body." Gibbon was probably no botanist any more than Dr. Johnson, but we should have been pleased if Mrs. Arber had told us whether there was any foundation for Gibbon's belief that rice was "the ancient food of Italy." Some of the facts which Mrs. Arber does mention about rice are well worthy of note. One often wonders why some of the Eastern peoples keep rice as their staple food, especially as it is dearer than wheat, and not a very complete food stuff ("it lacks nitrogenous matter and also fat.") But we get this interesting piece of information which may possibly account for a good deal:-"The deficiencies of the grain from the food standpoint become virtues under tropical conditions, since they improve its keeping capacity."
Curious and disjointed facts which we have heard in youth some- times stay in our heads a long time. When I was a schoolboy we had Robinson Crusoe as an examination text-book, and the teacher, believing that the examiners were likely to ask a question on de Foe's errors in Robinson Crusoe, had carefully coached us on all these mistakes. I have forgotten them all now, except one. I don't think my teacher was a botanist but he told us that when Robinson Crusoe is represented as emptying the bag of remains of barley and rice on the ground under the rocks and later finding barley and rice growing, that de Foe had made a mistake; that the rice grain in this condition would not grow; that it was the only grain which lost its germ in being hulled.*
Now the rice grain as we get it for food has no germ. Mrs. Arber, of course, does not mention in what stage of the process
to
* Since writing the above I have found that this error and others in Robinson Crusoe are mentioned by Archbishop Whately in his Commonplace Book, and my teacher seems have got them from this source.
July 1935.
18