390 The Transformation of Plants. 



wheat Beards were further diminished. Each spikelet 

 contained from four to five flowers, of which three were 

 fertile, as in good wheat. These were really wheat. 



Up to this time the experiments had been conducted in a 

 walled enclosure, where no other grass was permitted to 

 grow, and far from any other grain crop. The corn was 

 always sown in the autumn, ripening in the years above 

 indicated. But M. Fabre now transferred his experiments to 

 the open field, sowing his iEgilops wheat broadcast. In this 

 way he cropped a field near the road from Marseillan, com- 

 pletely surrounded by vines, and far from any wheat field. 

 For four consecutive years he persevered in his trial, obtain- 

 ing every year wheat like that of the neighboring farms, and 

 sixfold or eightfold according to the season. 



In 1850 the straw was stiff and full ; the ears nearly 

 smooth, and composed of from eight to twelve spikelets, 

 each containing two or three fertile flowers, and consequently 

 yielding from two to three grains of corn, which were very 

 floury, and scarcely at all concave. The crop was however 

 very short this year, owing to excessive dryness, which 

 greatly injured all the cereal crops. 



Thus " during the twelve consecutive years," remarks 

 M. Fabre, " in which I have pursued the cultivation of ^. 

 triticoides, I have found it gradually improving, and becoming 

 real wheat ; but I have never seen an instance of its running 

 back to the jE. ovata from which it sprung." 



Subsequently Dr. Lindley offered the following remarks 

 upon M. Fabre's experiment, concluding with some valuable 

 hints on hybridization, &c. : — 



No fact in natural history more pregnant with conse- 

 quences has been elicited than that transformation to which 

 we last week drew the attention of the public. That a 

 miserable grass, should in no more than twelve generations 

 become such an important article of food as wheat, would 

 have been incredible, in the absence of the direct and posi- 

 tive testimony that has been produced by M. Fabre. So 



