354 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



edly called on to demonstrate the alleged change, and as an inducement for 

 them to do this, premiums have actually been offered. 



A late revival of the transmutation controversy induced Benj. Hodge, 

 Esq., of Buffalo, New York., to offer a premium of one hundred dollars to 

 any one who should prove that wheat had turned to chess, the premium 

 to be awarded under the supervision of a committee appointed by the New- 

 York State Agricultural Society. The premium has been claimed by Samuel 

 Davidson, of Greece, Monroe County, New York. The society appointed a 

 committee of investigation, Prof. Dewey, of Rochester, chairman, the result 

 of whose examination is thus detailed in the New York Country Gentleman : 



" The experiment to prove transmutation was the following : A quantity 

 of earth was passed through a fine sieve, to separate all chess seeds. It was 

 placed in a pan, and several heads of wheat planted in it. When the wheat 

 came up, it was subjected to all the hard treatment that usually produces 

 winter-killing, viz., flooding with water, and alternately freezing and thaw- 

 ing for several times. Late in the spring, the whole contents of the pan 

 were removed and set out in open ground. When the plants of wheat threw 

 out their heads, there appeared chess heads also. This mass of wheat and 

 chess plants was brought in and placed before the committee. Stalks of 

 chess were shown, the roots of which were found to proceed directly from 

 the planted heads of wheat, which yet remained entire, and in some instan- 

 ces they were found to issue from the half-decayed grains of wheat them- 

 selves. This was looked upon as conclusive. 



"The roots were taken by the committee and first soaked in water, and 

 afterwards gently washed, by moving them backwards and forwards slowly 

 through it. They were then carefully examined by microscopes. The roots 

 of the chess were now perceived to issue, not from near the end of the grain 

 of wheat, as is usual in sprouting, but from the side, and, in fact, from 

 almost any part. Further examination showed that they merely passed 

 through crevices in the decayed Avheat grains, and they were separated from 

 the grains without tearing, being merely in contact, without adhesion or con- 

 nection. Some of the more minute chess fibres were observed by an achro- 

 matic microscope to extend over the inner surface of the bran, where they 

 had gone in search of the nourishment (which is known to abound just within 

 the bran), in the same way that grape roots have been observed to spread 

 over the surface of a rich decaying bone. But they easily separated, and 

 had no connection with the grain. It was satisfactorily proved that the 

 chess plant could not have come from these grains, by the fact that the same 

 single stalk of chess was thus connected with five or six different grains, 

 which could no more have originated it than five or six cows could have one 

 calf. The examination, therefore, did not prove anything in favor of trans- 

 mutation ; and as there were many possible ways in which the chess might 

 have become scattered on the soil, the whole experiment was admitted by 

 all parties to be inconclusive." 



