102 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the -whole duration of vegetation, and continues at the time of 

 flowering, which, without doubt, by a mechanism of which we do 

 not know the method of operation, takes place only when the 

 quantity of materials elaborated is sufficient to nourish the seeds 

 which are about to appear. 



The wheat begins to head, in our latitude, early in June. On 

 pressing lightly between the fingers the upper part of the stem, 

 at the place where it appears a little swollen, we meet a slight 

 resistance, due to the head, which is entirely formed before it 

 emerges. It is composed of a stem ; the rhachis, which bears the 

 flowers, formed of little green leaflets; and the glumes, one of 

 which terminates, in some varieties, in the long appendage char- 

 acteristic of bearded wheat. If, at the moment when the head 

 emerges outside of the stem, we gently lay open the glumes, we 

 shall discover the essential organs of the flower within. On a 

 little greenish swelling, the rudiment of the corn, are fixed two 

 little aigrettes of plumes, slightly divergent. These are the pistils, 

 the female organs. Around them, fixed at the extremity of fine 

 peduncles, are the anthers, as yet closed. They contain the pollen, 

 the yellow fecundating dust. At the moment of maturity the 

 anthers open and the pollen falls on the little plumes of pistils, 

 well constructed to hold it. It germinates there, sends out a long 

 tube the pollinical branch into the ovule, to which the plumous 

 pistils are attached. Fecundation is accomplished, and the corn 

 is formed. 



All these delicate operations, which it is so interesting to fol- 

 low, take place in the formed flower. When the stamens, emerg- 

 ing between the glumelles, appear without, or, to use the common 

 expression, the wheat is in flower, everything is really done. So, 

 when we try to create hybrids that is, new varieties endowed 

 with qualities wanting in one of the parents, we must take the 

 anthers from the flowers before the plumes are open and the 

 anthers have shed their pollen. 



The operation exacts much care. When the flower is half 

 opened, we cut off the anthers it contains and drop in the pollen 

 of the variety which we have chosen to give the one we operated 

 upon the qualities which it lacks. One of the most widely dis- 

 tributed varieties around Paris, the Dattel, was created in this 

 way by M. H. de Vilmerin by fecundating the pistils of the Eng- 

 lish Chiddam wheat, which had fine qualities but a short straw, 

 with the pollen of the Prince Albert wheat. The operation was 

 perfectly successful ; the straw of the Dattel is thicker and longer 

 by at least five inches than that of the Chiddam, from which it 

 is derived. The variety is quite fixed ; it reproduces itself with 

 well-defined characteristics ; and the experiment has now been of 

 long enough duration to make it certain that the seed sown is not 



