Note 3 — Chapter IV · EGYPT THE JAPAN OF THE OLD WORLD.

It is a curious fact that the inhabitants of the Lake-villages of Switzerland cultivated, in the prehistoric period, as may be seen in the Zurich collection of objects from the sites of these villages, the same variety of wheat—that which we call Mummy, or hen-and-chickens wheat—as the old Egyptians. Did the first immigrants into Europe, of whom we may suppose that we have some historical traces, for the Etruscans may have been, and the Laps, Finns, and Basques may still be, surviving fragments of their settlements, bring with them this variety of wheat at the same time that another swarm from the same Central Asian hive were taking it with them to the Valley of the Nile.