APPENDIX A. 
From A. E. Humphries, Esq., Weybridge, to the Imperial Eco- 
nomic Botanist, dated Weybridge, July 13th, 1908. 
I duly received your letters of May 21st and 28th, and the 25 small samples 
of wheat have since come to hand. None of the ten large sample lots for milling 
and baking tests has yet arrived, but, in accordance with your request, I have 
examined the 25 small samples without waiting for the larger ones, and send you 
herewith my opinion as a British miller upon them. 
When I speak of strength, | mean “a flour capacity for making big shapely 
loaves.” Its capacity for making a large number of loaves from a given quantity 
of flour is in my view another matter upon which nobody can safely express an 
opinion by merely looking at samples. Of the many points upon which a miller 
bases his estimate of value in buying wheats, strength is the one to which pre- 
eminent importance is attached on almost all our United Kingdom markets. 
The very strong wheats of the world appear to be grown in countries where great 
heat is accompanied by a substantial or large summer rainfall, and as yet I have 
not come across any Indian wheat, which, on its own merits, in other words, 
when it is used for bread-making by itself, would come into our category of very 
strong wheat. I shall watch with very great interest any attempts you make to 
produce such wheats, especially if you experiment with Fife, but, in the meantime 
and particularly for my immediate purpose, I shall base my estimate of the 
commercial value of your wheats principally on their relative strength and the 
whiteness of the flour which they would yield under our modern conditions of 
milling. In this connection, I should like to point out that there is no invariable 
connection between the quality of the flour produced from the kernel of the wheat 
berry and the colour of the skin. A red skin does not necessarily indicate 
strength, nor does a white one necessarily indicate weakness, and sometimes the 
flour from red wheat is much whiter than the flour from white wheat. Ihave 
also to take into account how the wheats you have sent me would suit the 
methods of cleaning and milling in common use here. For instance, among your 
dwarf wheats are two (Nos. 7& 4) which are extraordinarily small in the berry, 
so small that millers would hesitate to buy them if they contained any small 
seeds, because the machinery used for extracting the small seeds would take out 
