DOES WHEAT TURN TO CHESS? 47 



from which it grew. If he is as successful as the 

 writer has been he will find it in nearly every case, 

 and will have no difficulty in seeing that it is a 

 kernel of chess, and not of wheat. Occasionally a 

 kernel of true wheat has been found attached to 

 the roots of chess, and has been exhibited as evi- 

 dence that the chess grew from the wheat kernel. 

 In fact, chess plants have been exhibited with five 

 or six wheat kernels attached to the roots, which of 

 itself proves that they could no more have origin- 

 ated the plant than that several cows could have 

 one calf. In all such cases which have been exam- 

 ined, the wheat kernels were found at some distance 

 from the base of the stem, and it has turned out 

 that a root of a growing chess plant has merely 

 entered an old decayed wheat kernel which existed 

 in the soil. In such cases the old kernel has been 

 easily separated from the root and shown to have 

 no real connection with it, while on the other hand, 

 the old grain from which a plant springs is always 

 quite firmly attached. The position of the old seed 

 upon a seedling plant may be readily studied by 

 examining any young plant of corn or other grain. 

 Persons have sometimes been puzzled by finding 

 heads of wheat which bore one or more spikelets of 

 chess, and these have been exhibited as evidence 

 that such heads were changing to chess. One such 

 case was exhibited before a meeting of the Mich- 



