TWO SPECIES OF BUCKWHEAT. 87 



I have mentioned, I believe, in a previous chapter, 

 that two species of buckwheat are cultivated in this 

 province more distinct, of course, as species are, than 

 the varieties we usually meet with among cultivated 

 grains. The first is the old or smooth-seeded, Polygonum 

 fagopyrum, which has a white flower. The grain of this 

 kind can be ground with close stones, and shells very 

 easily and completely. It weighs 48 to 56 lb., and 

 yields about 36 lb. of flour per bushel. The second, 

 called here the new, Canada, rough, or curly-grained, is 

 the P. tartaricum. Its seed is rough and wrinkled 5 it 

 has a green flower, is here considered more prolific, and 

 a surer crop, because less liable to be injured by early 

 frosts. It must be ground with wide stones, and yields 

 only ] 8 lb. of fine flour from the bushel. But the flour 

 is whiter ; and, to compensate for the smallness of the 

 quantity of flour, it yields double the quantity of nutri 

 tious bran, which, for feeding pigs, is considered superior 

 to oatmeal. It is an objection to all varieties of buck 

 wheat, that it is very apt to shed its seed in windy 

 weather. It was stated to me here, as an additional 

 recommendation of this early-seeded variety, that it sheds 

 its seed so much that, if the ground be merely ploughed 

 up, it will give a second crop without sowing ! I sup 

 pose it is the same species which is sown in Siberia, and 

 along the banks of the Wolga, and which there yields 

 five or six successive crops after one sowing. But there, 

 as in Brittany, the people are miserably poor. 



A few miles beyond the mills, we came upon the edge 

 of the soft moss. I found it like a real Scotch or Irish 

 bog, through and beneath which an incautious man might 

 readily disappear. Like our green Scotch and English 

 mosses, it was composed chiefly of sphagnum but, in 

 stead of heath, it bore on the drier tufts the small very 

 heath-like crowberry, Empetrum, and the larger rhodora, 

 II. canadensiS) and narrow-leaved American laurel, Kal- 



