276 NATURAL SCIENCE. April, 



T. monococcum must be tabooed, while T. polonictim had also better be 

 avoided. 



The ideal wheat for cultivation in Britain should give plenty of 

 straw of good quality, and strong enough to carry the ear till ripe 

 without being laid, should tiller — i.e., produce new shoots from the 

 base — freely and ripen early, yielding a good weight of fine well-filled 

 seeds. " In selecting parents it should be remembered that the male 

 appears to exercise a special influence on the seed, while the female 

 affects the character of the vegetative parts of the plant." In the 

 Royal AgviculUiral Society s Journal for 1889, Mr. Henry Evershed gave 

 an account of experiments on the cross-fertilisation of wheat carried 

 out by Messrs. Carter ; the cross-bred seedlings yielded a variety 

 of forms, and careful selection was required to fix permanently the 

 best of these. In his recent paper, Mr. Carruthers describes some 

 results of experiments in cross-breeding, extending over thirty years, 

 made by Messrs. R. & J. Garton, at Newton-le- Willows, Lancashire. 

 These gentlemen have collected numerous varieties from which to 

 select suitable parents, not only from Britain, but from all parts of 

 the world. Parents have been chosen both from the established 

 varieties with which they began and also from the improved ones 

 obtained in the course of their experiments. Whenever a good point 

 in quality or quantity of straw or grain was detected, an endeavour 

 was made to maintain or increase it by using the plant in turn as a 

 parent. Thus the varieties with which they are now working are the 

 products of many previous crosses, and may be termed composite 

 crosses. A serious difficulty exists in the increased tendency to 

 variation with the increase in the number of parents, and careful 

 selection of desirable forms and their continued cultivation is 

 necessary, with persistent elimination of sports and defective plants^ 

 before a fixed variety can be established. 



Our first figure represents a few of the parents of the new 

 varieties raised by Messrs. Garton. Hardcastle and Mainstay are 

 in general cultivation. The spelt was used in the hope of getting 

 a form which would inherit a seed so enclosed in the glumes 

 as not to fall out during harvesting, while the flinty seeds of 

 the Hard wheat and the abundant cropping of the Grey wheat 

 offered qualities which might be combined with advantage. After 

 several years' crossing, a selection was made of the most hopeful 

 varieties, and these have been under careful cultivation for three 

 years. The second figure represents eleven of these composite 

 crosses grown in 1893, " all of which are the progeny of a selected 

 plant of the harvest of 1890." The remarkable tendency to sport is 

 well shown ; it results from the great diversity of ancestors repre- 

 sented in the direct parent, the 1890 plant, and gives some idea of 

 the difficulty experienced in getting a pure and fixed variety. An 

 examination of the individual figures and comparison with the figures in 

 our first illustration will show the effect of the different original parents.. 



