WHEAT. 43 



that before the season had too far advanced one other 

 division might have been effected, when the number 

 might have been at least quadrupled. The rive 

 hundred plants proved extremely vigorous, much more 

 so than wheat under ordinary culture, so that the 

 number of ears submitted to the sickle was 21,109, or 

 more than forty to each of the divided plants : in some 

 instances there were one hundred ears upon one plant. 

 The ears were remarkably fine, some being six or 

 seven inches long, and containing from sixty to 

 seventy grains. The wheat, when separated from the 

 straw, weighed forty-seven pounds and seven ounces, 

 and measured three pecks and three quarters, the 

 estimated number of grains being 576,840. 



Such an enormous increase is not of course attain- 

 able on any great scale, or by the common modes of 

 culture ; but the experiment is of use as showing the 

 vast power of increase with which the most valuable 

 of vegetables is endowed, and which, by judiciously 

 varying the mode of tillage, may possibly in time be 

 brought into beneficial action. 



The ordinary produce of wheat varies exceedingly, 

 depending much upon the quality of the soil, the 

 nature of the season, and the mode of culture. The 

 average produce of the soil of a country depends, as 

 does every other species of production, upon the ad- 

 vance of its inhabitants in knowledge and in the pos- 

 session of capital. It has been conjectured, that in 

 the 13th century, an acre of good land in England 

 would produce twelve bushels of wheat.* In two 

 centuries this rate of produce appears to have greatly 

 increased. Harrison, writing in 1574, says, ' The 

 yield of our corne-ground is much after this rate 

 following : Throughout the land (if you please to 



* Sir J. Cullum's ' History of Hawksted,' quoted in Eden's. 

 ' History of the Poor,' vol. i, p. 18. 



