254 THE WHEAT CULTUKIST. 



from year to year, until farmers were satisfied that it 

 would not pay to sow that kind of wheat any longer. 



The abettors of this theory of degeneracy, maintain 

 that the wheat plant has an inherent tendency to de- 

 generate ; and not a few men, who have acquired some- 

 thing of a reputation for being scientific, have also 

 endorsed this visionary theory, and have even affirmed 

 that " the science of botany and vegetable physiology 

 proves that wheat, or any other plant, when grown on 

 the same soil for a long succession of years, will con- 

 tinue to degenerate until it is not worth raising." This 

 theory received the sanction of such men as Hon. Jesse 

 Buel, who moved the world with his agricultural wis- 

 dom, and who acknowledged that " the tendency of 

 varieties to degenerate is not a vague opinion, but a 

 fixed fact, and that the duration of a variety in perfec- 

 tion is generally computed at from fourteen to twenty 

 years, though this period is sometimes prolonged by a 

 change of soil or climate." T. A. Knight, the Presi- 

 dent of the London Horticultural Society, writes: "I 

 believe that almost every variety now cultivated in this 

 and the adjoining counties, has long since passed the 

 period of its age when a succession should have taken 

 its place. It has long been known that every variety 

 cultivated, gradually becomes debilitated, losing a large 

 portion of its powers of producing grain fully equal to 

 previous crops." 



We know this is not so. The science of botany and 

 vegetable physiology teaches no such doctrine. Rea- 

 son, common sense, and the experience of the past are 

 all decidedly against it. It never has been and never 

 can be shown that there is any natural tendency in 

 well-established varieties of wheat, or any other grain, to 



