THE WHEAT CULTUKIST. 251 



theory the same thing. What can such an inference 

 mean in the light of the fact that peas, strawberries, 

 etc., that have been grown in Georgia and the Carolina?. 

 are seen in abundance in the .New York market several 

 weeks, more or less, before the same and similar varie- 

 ties are even out of blossom eight or ten degrees farther 

 northward. The peas were nearly ripe at the south in 

 consequence of being subject to a sufficiency of heat by 

 a given date, and they were not yet formed in the pod 

 at the north, by reason of not having been subject to 

 any such sufficiency of heat as was necessary to a like 

 result at the same date. 



" If wheat seed is taken from south to north, it does 

 not carry any vital force in the seed germ that can 

 modify or resist the force of northern temperatures. On 

 the contrary, northern temperature, or climatic forces, 

 must control the character of the next seed crop, by 

 wholly originating and controlling the growth of the 

 entire plant. Supposing northern fall wheat to be just 

 restarting to grow with vigor at the opening of the Erie 

 Canal, similar fall wheat will be then half-leg high in 

 Tennessee, and this because it was subject to a sufficiency 

 of heat weeks before our northern wheat received any 

 such adequate, supply of that thermal element. 



" To procure seed from the south will not only not 

 accelerate, but retard the harvest, because such seed will 

 have been acclimated by and be adapted to a higher 

 degree of heat at -such and all, or nearly all, stages of 

 its growth, than it can receive in a far northern situation. 

 Having grown under a higher thermal forcing influ- 

 ence, it will not grow, till after several years of accli- 

 mation, with equal vigor and rapidity with a lower heat 

 or less forcing. 



