UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 303 



granted examine every thing with your own 

 eyes, and learn facts." 



I shall like this employment very much, and 

 Mary, Frederick, and myself have agreed to 

 work in concert. Both my uncle and aunt en- 

 courage us ; they say it will afford a large field 

 for very entertaining experiments, and they think 

 that inquiries of this sort are highly useful to 

 young people. 



23d. The fields which were ploughed and 

 sown with wheat not above two months ago, are 

 now of a beautiful green ; how hardy it must be, 

 to withstand the severe weather, which I am 

 told may soon be expected ! My uncle says, 

 that wheat grows in every variety of climate, 

 except in regions of extreme cold. 



It has not been ascertained of what country 

 wheat was a native, and it is certainly a very re- 

 markable fact, that, though cultivated so gene- 

 rally, no wild plants of those species that are used 

 in agriculture have been found, though one of 

 our late travellers imagined that he found it in 

 the mountains of Thibet. 



The ploughs are still at work preparing the. 

 ground for oats to be sown in spring; or 

 they are laying it up in fallows. The potatoes 

 have all been dug long ago, and safely packed in 

 houses, to preserve them from the frost, which 

 spoils them. My uncle says, that, though pota- 



