216 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



will stand any kind of weather or treatment. It tillers very 

 much ; and if the wheat or rye suffers from the weather, a few 

 seeds of chess will show very great results. 



Mr. Robinson. — I settled once on a western prairie ; I sowed 

 some Clean, handsome looking wheat in November, and it came 

 up quite green. The cattle got into it, but it grew the next 

 spring, and made heads, but ninety-nine out of every hundred of 

 them bore chess. I knew another instance. In a large tract of 

 wheat was a water basin, where the water stood in the winter; 

 and while the rest of the field produced a handsome crop of wheat, 

 over the spot where the Avater stood there was not a stalk of wheat, 

 but the stalks of chess were as thick as the wheat outside the line. 

 Yet I do not believe that wheat turns to chess ; I believe the seeds 

 of the chess had lain there from time immemorial. I knew another 

 instance where the marks of a threshing machine were plainly to be 

 seen wherever it went, from the growth, not of wheat, but of chess. 



Mr. Fuller. — Can it be proved that wheat was not originally 

 chess ? 



Mr. Carpenter. — "Were oats, wheat, barley and rye all chess 

 originally? They are all said to turn to chess. 



Mr. Fuller. — If it could be shoAvn that these grains all had a 

 common origin, in chess, it might clear up the mystery. But we 

 do not now know what was the origin of any of them. Some ten 

 years ago a friend of mine in Wisconsin sowed two and a half 

 acres with oats, at the bottom of a hill, upon new land. He 

 harvested his crop, and in the winter the heavy rains washed 

 down earth enough to cover the oats that had been shelled out. 

 They came up beautifully, but they produced all chess; yet I do 

 not think the oats turned to chess. 



Prof. Mapes stated that he had carried to the Smithsonian 

 Institution two heads of wheat, each containing chess upon the 

 same head with the wheat. They decided that it was there a 

 parasite. Wheat or rye decaying in the soil may furnish the very 

 pabulum needed by chess. 



The Chairman. — If wheat develops chess from the want of 

 proper cultivation, then by proper cultivation chess ought to pro- 

 duce wheat. Here is an opportunity for useful experiment. Let 

 somebody take the best chess he can find and see if he can pro- 

 duce wheat from. it. 



