130 



2. — As to the extent of the tillering of the stems, I had a 

 plant of wheat in May which measured (as across the centre of a 

 wheel laid horizontally) from the extremities of the leaves of the 

 longest stems 5ft. Gin. in one direction, and 5ft. 4in. the other. 

 In other words, it covered a circle of nearly six feet in diameter. 



3. — I have now in my possession a plant of wheat consisting 

 of 153 ears produced from a single gi-ain planted the preceding 

 autumn, and I have had a similar i^lant of barley with 110 ears 

 ■upon it. 



Thus far, as to the general nature of the cereals. Let mo 

 now present to you, as fully as the limits of such a paper as this 

 permits the results of actual experunents extending over more 

 than 20 years. The first results obtained were from wheat, of 

 course of unknown lineage ; for, as a matter of fact, there was no 

 wheat (except Colonel Le Couteur's which did not come into my 

 hands until several year.s afterwards) which could in any degree 

 be said to have an authenticated lineage, but I obtained the best 

 example procurable. These first results at once confimed the 

 crude original idea with which I started, viz., that large ears would 

 certainly produced large ears. But they showed more than this 

 The grains from the same ear (as was afterwards found in Le 

 Couteur's wheat before referred to) were not alike in productive 

 and other powers. 



It was this latter fact which deeply impressed my mind as 

 opening up a field of inquiry at once much wider and more refined 

 than any I had theretofore imagined. Were these differences 

 inherent in the very nature of the plants, or were they merely the 

 reversions of an uncertain bred race to some former ancestors in its 

 (unknown) lineage ? This question could be solved only by 

 .obtaining a cereal with a known recorded lineage. Pursuing then 

 this branch of inquiry, I found from repeated trials (and it must 

 be borne in mind that in this case each trial means a whole year) 

 that the powers of the grains from the same ear did not become 

 equalized, in spite of the fact that the ear itself was now known 

 to be descended from a succession of best grains (known to have 



