250 THE WHEAT CULTUKIST. 



ceeding was introduced into these latitudes in Wis- 

 consin and elsewhere, by some of his, or rather Joe 

 Smith's followers. The climate of those latitudes was 

 then much as at present ; yet it required full fjve years 

 to acclimate this favorite and now general variety of 

 the northwest, before it matured sufficiently early to 

 ripen ere severe frosts set in and could be relied upon 

 as a staple crop. Wheat being subject to the same 

 forces of climate, must be therefore influenced in the 

 degree that its new place of growth is dissimilar, or more 

 or less favorable to vegetable development. Mr. Clay's 

 and his neighbor Mr. Howard's experience, though the 

 opposite of each other, both tend to prove that corn 

 cannot mature so early when first grown from southern 

 seed ; and the writer used seed from Maryland two 

 years ago, and under the most favorable condition of 

 soil and culture, yet not a kernel of it ripened. If 

 five years are requisite to acclimate corn removed only 

 five or six degrees farther north, and seed raised in 

 Mississippi does not ripen till October in Kentucky, 

 and that grown in Maryland will not ripen at all in 

 latitude 43 north, why are we to expect Kentucky 

 wheat to ripen in Western ISTew York, and the same 

 latitude west or east of it, earlier than native-grown 

 seed ? 



" If it should be alleged that wheat, unlike corn in this 

 particular, does not require either so high a heat or so 

 long a season to mature it, the fact is admitted ; but 

 what is the inference ? Is it, that because wheat ripens 

 early, and before the hottest weather has more than half 

 passed, in Tennessee or Kentucky, it will ripen equally 

 early five to ten degrees farther north ? If this be the 

 supposition, it must surely be without good reason or 



