THE WHEAT-FIELD 205 



hard wheats best liked in America, and known 

 by the millers here to be the best, do not produce 

 crops of sufficient size to please British farmers. 

 Lately, the agricultural school of our own Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge has been engaged in pro- 

 ducing a hybrid between the prolific soft wheat 

 and the better but less productive hard Fife 

 wheat. After hybridization, selection was carried 

 on for some years, and now it is said that success 

 has been secured. Another grower announced a 

 year ago that he had produced a spring wheat of 

 rapid growth and great cropping power. If it 

 is not a fact yet, it is an ideal that is certain to 

 be realized, and, far as the goat grass has gone, 

 it will go immeasurably further. 



It will never be quite known what weedy com- 

 panions the wheat has picked up in its journeys 

 over the world ; what weeds of cultivation it took 

 from Europe to India, from India back again, 

 from England to America, and vice versa, or what 

 exchanges it has made with the antipodes. The 

 scarlet poppy is probably British, a rare plant that 

 might have been extinct by now, if it had not been 

 for agriculture. It is seldom found except on or 

 round the ploughing. The scabious has an air 

 of oriental magnificence, but that may be only 

 because it has been unwittingly cultivated for so 

 many thousand years. It is evidently most at 

 home in limestone regions, and has probably been 

 transplanted elsewhere in limestone farm pro- 

 duce. It would be hard to have to give up our 



