110 2'ransformation of ^gilops into Wheat. 



j^gilops triticoides is the first known example of a hybrid ob 

 served in this family. 



2. The species of yEr/ilops must be united generically with 

 Triticum; which is, besides, confirmed by the shape of their fruit, 

 an organ which, in the family of the grasses, furnishes far more 

 important characters than the conformation of the floral en- 

 velopes. 



3. The observations of M. Fabre upon y^f/ilops triticoides 

 do not in any way prove that cultivated wheat originates from 

 j^gilops ovata, or tliat one species can be transformed into 

 another. 



Oil jTlgilops triticoides and its different Forms. — Second Memoir 

 by Dr. GoDRON. 



When MM. Fabre and Dunal announced that j:fEgilo]js triti- 

 coides originated from a spike of j^gilops ovata, while some 

 seeds of the same spike simultaneously reproduced exactly the 

 latter plant, a fact so unexpected riveted attention, and most ot 

 the botanical journals published in Europe, and even in America, 

 discussed the important questions raised by this discovery. The 

 well-known talent for observation of M. Fabre, and the scientific 

 authority of Professor Dunal, made it difficult to suppose that 

 there had been any error of observation, in reference to a fact so 

 easy to verify. 



Two eminent botanists, however, neither of whom have ascer- 

 tained for themselves, in the plains of Languedoc and Provence, 

 the assertions which had been promulgated, received the memoir 

 of MM. Dunal and Fabre in very different ways. 



Dr. Lindley, in England, raising no doubt as so the reality 

 of the facts, likewise admits the conclusions which those two 

 observers had drawn from them, sacrificed his old idols and 

 accepted the doctrine of the variability of species.* The publi- 

 cation of my memoir on the Fertilization oi JEgilops by Triticum 

 (see above) did not at all modify his new convictions, and he 

 will persist, he says, until I have made known the origin of 

 wheat. But as Dr. Asa Gray,t has very properly remarked, my 

 object was not to cliscover the origin of wheat, but that of 

 ^gilops triticoides. 



M. Jordan, in France, in a memoir published in 1853,f 

 simply denied the principal fact observed by MM. Dunal and 



* This is not a clear statement of Dr. Lindley's view, as we understand it. He 

 does admit variation of species, but not mutation. He regards ^t/ilops ovata and 

 Triticum vultjare as forms of one species. — A. H. 



+ Silliman's Journal, 2nd ser., vol. xx. p. 134. 



X Jordan, ' Sur I'Origine des divers Vari^t^s et Especes d'Arbres Fruitiers, &c.' 



