Convertibility of Wheat into Cheat or Chess. 661 



CONVERTIBILITY OF WHEAT INTO CHEAT OR CHESS. 



The opinion continues to be very much encouraged amongst 

 agriculturists, that the heads of cheat or chess, which are 

 often found in wheat fields, take their origin from seeds like 

 those which they bear, and not from the seeds of wheat, which 

 many insist are immutable and undegenerate in their nature. 

 This opinion is a very natural and, perhaps, a very useful one 

 to entertain, as it induces great vigilance on the part of the 

 farmer in the selection of his wheat seed. Having practised 

 farming upon a tolerably extensive scale during the most active 

 part of my life, my opinions as to the immutability of wheat 

 were long ago shaken. After attending to the selection of seed 

 with the most scrupulous care, and with experimental views, I 

 was too often disappointed when I had the greatest reason to 

 entertain sanguine expectations in favour of the immutable sys- 

 tem. Upon more than one occasion, too, when I had taken 

 every possible precaution, and had seen the spring open upon a 

 fine field, as I thought, of wheat in the grass, I had the mortifi- 

 cation to find it shoot up almost entirely into chess. The friends 

 of immutability told me the chess had eaten the wheat out, but 

 they never told me how the chess got into the field, or why the 

 wheat had not eaten it out, which I should much have preferred. 

 However, I sometimes had a great crop of wheat, and perhaps 

 the chess was eaten out upon these occasions. 



Having had a hberal share of agricultural controversy, I am 

 content to let others enjoy their opinions, however distant they 

 may be from my own on such subjects, and do not wish to be 

 thought desirous of encroaching upon a province, which now 

 engages the attention of many able agricultural editors. 



I have a fact, however, to communicate to my botanical and 

 agricultural readers, which ought to have weight in a contro- 

 verted matter of very great interest. 



Whilst on a geological excursion this summer in Virginia, as 

 the close of the wheat harvest ; Mr. Conway, of Rapid Ann, Ma- 

 dison county, presented me with a plant of cheat or chess, which 

 he had plucked up by the roots from one of his wheat fields. 

 Mr. Conway is a gentleman farmer, well known for his intelli- 

 gence and opulence, and his attention having been long drawn 



Vol. I.— 71 



