36 AMERICAN WHEAT AND CORN. 



supply of nitrogen by the soil. It is more probably due to enhanced for- 

 mation of starch under the influence of high ripening temperature." 



Allowing the correctness of their conclusions in their application to 

 the cases which they have had under consideration and to many local 

 instances in the United States where to similar causes havo been very 

 evidently due high or low percentages of nitrogen, they are not, how- 

 ever, justified in attributing the poverty of American wheat in nitrogen 

 as a whole to an enhanced starch formation, and for the following rea- 

 sons : 



An enhanced formation of starch, there being no poverty of nitrogen 

 in the soil, increases the weight of the grain and diminishes the relative 

 percentage of nitrogen. Were this the cause of the relatively low per- 

 centage of nitrogen in our American wheats, the grain from the East- 

 ern States, which are poorest in this respect, would be heavier than 

 those from the Middle West, which are richer in albuminoids; but this 

 is not the case. Again, formation of starch is attributed by Messrs. 

 Lawes and Gilbert to the higher ripening temperature in America, but 

 we have found that there is scarcely any difference in composition or 

 weight between wheats from Canada and Alabama and if anything 

 those from Canada contain more starch than those from the South, and 

 the spring wheats from Manitoba with its colder climate more than those 

 from Dakota and Minnesota with its milder temperature. In Oregon 

 there is a striking example of the formation of starch and increase in 

 the size of the grain at the relative expense of the nitrogen due to cli- 

 mate but not to high ripening temperature. The average weight per 

 hundred grains of wheat from this State has been found to be 5.044 

 grams and the relative percentage of nitrogen 1.37, equivalent to 8.60 

 of albuminoids. These are the extremes for America and are due, as 

 has been said, to the enhanced formation of starch. This, however, is 

 not owing to high ripening temperature, because most of the specimens 

 were grown west of the Cascade Range, which has an extremely moist 

 climate and a summer temperature not exceeding 82 F. for any daily 

 mean. The climate in another way, however, is of course the cause, by 

 producing luxuriant growth, as illustrated by all the vegetation of the 

 country. Numerous other analyses are illustrations of the important 

 ^effect of surroundings and season upon the storing of starch and con- 

 sequent relative changes in the composition of the grain. The crop of 

 Ohio for 1883, for instance, as has been remarked in the previous pages 

 of this report, was shriveled in appearance, owing to wet weather about 

 the time of ripening. The result was that the grain was small in size 

 and of light weight, as it could not store up its usual quantity of starch, 

 and the relative percentage of nitrogen was therefore increased. In 

 Dakota the contrast between a winter and a spring wheat has been 

 shown and the cause determined as lack of starch, and consequently 

 size, in the latter variety, and this holds true as a characteristic of all 

 the spring wheats of the Northwest. Thev are high in nitrogen, small 



