200 THE RING OF NATURE 



wheat. Wheat that lies in the ground through 

 an English winter employs the time in making 

 good and long - penetrating roots on which to 

 rear a crop that shall do it justice and bring the 

 farmer joy. There is no searcher-out of the good 

 things that the soil contains like winter wheat. 

 In the village school they teach the sprouting of 

 a monocotyledonous seed by putting grains of 

 wheat to germinate in water. Up goes a little 

 green plumule and down goes a little root, and the 

 child imagines that the growth of the wheat is 

 fully illustrated. A heap of wheat on the ground 

 would so sprout, and if one of the grains should 

 bear progeny it would be probably on a single 

 ear at the end of a single grass. But give it room, 

 up to a square foot of soil for each grain, and time 

 to tiller and make preparation, and your single 

 grain will send up fifty ears and bear a total 

 increase of over four thousand grains. 



In the actual wheat-field before us we find that 

 each plant has many heads, though seldom so many 

 as a dozen, nor has each plant more than a six-inch 

 circle for its own domain. Hence we get this para- 

 dox, that if we could properly plant each acre with 

 forty-four thousand grains instead of one hundred 

 and seventy-six thousand we could get a very much 

 greater crop, say eighty or a hundred bushels instead 

 of forty or fifty. In fact, a crop equal to a hundred 

 bushels has been grown experimentally by planting 

 and replanting wheat as we do apple trees, each in 

 its measured space. 



