HOWARD AND HOWARD. 13 
becomes red and quotes Werner in support, and even goes to the 
length of stating that the colour of the grain is useless in distinguish- 
ing a variety. In no case, however, have we found that these sup- 
posed transformations are based on recorded scientific evidence. 
It is, of course, often found that when an ordinary sample of white 
wheat is tested in a new locality, the resulting grain in a few years 
is entirely or almost entirely red. A little consideration, however, 
will show that this result is no evidence of the change of a white 
wheat into a red one. White wheats as ordinarily grown in Europe 
and much more so in India are not pure cultures. They generally 
contain red wheats as impurities and, as a rule, red wheats 
are hardier than white sorts. Consequently, when a white wheat 
containing red impurities is grown in a non-white wheat locality, 
the struggle for existence between the red “‘weeds’’ and the white 
sort which at once begins, may easily result in the gradual victory 
of the red. Ina few years, the white wheat may have disappeared 
entirely. Theresult of this alteration from a white to a red sample is 
of course due to the victory of the red over the white and affords no 
proof of a change' from white to red. We have so far found 
no evidence in the literature on wheat of a white wheat changing 
into a red one when grown in pure culture from a single ear and in 
land where contamination of the cultures, from stray seeds left froma 
previous crop or from manure or wrigation water, has been guarded 
against. 
In seeking to obtain experimental evidence on this point in 
India, we were fortunate enough in 1906 to obtain a very good 
example. The white wheat, known as Muzaffarnagar white, has 
been tested in many parts of India including Oudh and Behar. In 
the samples grown at Pusa, Cawnpore, Lyallpur and in the 
Muzaffarnagar district itself, we found that the wheat was not pure 
but contained among other things a red wheat very similar in 
the ear to the true Muzaffarnagar white wheat. Pure cultures 
of these wheats from single ears have been grown at Lyallpur and 
1 See de Vries, Species and Varieties—their Origin by Mutation, 2nd Edition, page 99, 
and Darwin, Yhe Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. 1, page 
334, 
