RAISING NEW VARIETIES 149 



of a few years the manner of inheritance of most 

 of the characteristics distinguishing the numerous 

 wheat varieties was traced in some detail. In 

 the course of the investigations it became clear that 

 the building up of fresh combinations of these 

 characters so as to form new varieties was a simple 

 matter. Given for instance such a problem as 

 raising a variety characterised by the possession of 

 a rough and red chaff, a combination of features 

 not occurring amongst English wheats, this could 

 be effected by crossing such a rough chaffed wheat 

 as Old Hoary with any smooth, red chaffed form 

 such as Square Head's Master, and further the 

 new variety could be obtained in a form breeding 

 true to type in as short a period as four years. 

 From a technical point of view, however, the 

 information obtained had singularly little value, 

 for the morphological characteristics of the wheats 

 with which the systematists are concerned have 

 little interest for the farmer. It is true that he 

 prefers a beardless to a bearded wheat, for the 

 awns are a nuisance if the chaff has to be fed to 

 cattle, he may also prefer a smooth-chaffed variety 

 to a rough-chaffed one, thinking that the hairs on 

 the glumes may retain the moisture during showery 

 weather and so cause the grain to sprout, or again 

 he often has more or less aesthetic preferences for 

 certain shapes of the ear or colour, yet broadly 

 speaking morphological features have as a whole 

 no really important significance to him. His one 



