540 The Natural History of British Grasses. 



winter the same as before, and sown in the spring of the present 

 year, the resulting crop, gathered in the latter end of August, 

 presenting the following curious variations : — 



Proportion 

 of each. 



1st. Avena fatua, wild oat of the true type, with large loose panicles 

 of flowers, thiu hairy florets, Avith the bent awn twisted at 

 the base 5 



2nd. Avena fatua, var. sativa, with loose panicles of flowers, florets 

 quite smooth and tumid, with or without straight awns, 

 some few examples slightly hairy towards the base. This 

 is near the potato-oat type 6 



3rd. Avena fatua, var. sativa. Panicles more compact, flowers in- 

 clining to one side, grains more tumid than 2, quite devoid 

 of hairs, awn straight. These present the type of the white 

 Tartarian oat 12 



Each of these forms is now separately saved for further expe- 

 riment, whilst the shed seeds of the plot are left to grow as they 

 would do in nature, with the view of demonstrating the down- 

 ward progress by the reverse methods to those adopted in the 

 cultivative ones. 



We may add here, that in the article Avena in Morton's ' Cyclo- 

 paedia of Agriculture,' Dr. Lindley referred to the probability of 

 the wild origin thus demonstrated, suggesting that the cultivated 

 oat is " a domesticated variety of some wild species, and may be 

 not improbably referred to Avena strigosa, the bristle-pointed 

 oat, which would become the common oat by a slight alteration 

 of the form and division of its pales and the loss of one of its 

 awns — changes much less considerable than are known to have 

 taken place in other cultivated plants." 



The experiments, as far as they have now gone, show us in the 

 clearest possible manner that ihe Avena fatua is the parent of our 

 cultivated oat, and that not only of one but of more forms or 

 varieties produced in the same space of time and by the same 

 series of operations, — conclusions which cannot be other than- 

 interesting to the botanist, Avhilst to the farmer they offer con- 

 siderations no less curious in theory than important in a practical 

 point of view. 



If we can produce the cultivated from the wild weed oat, it 

 follows that the weed may result from a degeneracy of the culti- 

 vated form ; and this will serve to show how true the instincts of 

 the old-fashioned farmer not unfrequently were, as we remember 

 that some years since a main objection to the growth of oats on 

 stiff" lias clays was, that they left behind them wild oats ; and all 

 who have had to deal with them as a weed, as not unfrequendy 

 occurs on the stiffer lands of the lias, Forest marble or Oxford clays, 

 may well dread any cause of its increase. As a botanical notion 



