DIBBLING WHEAT. 



405 



DIBBLING WHEAT. 



WITH INTERESTING REMARKS ON THE CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER OF WHEAT SINCE THK 



FIRST NOTICE OF IT IN THE DIVINE RECORDS. OREGON CORN. — 



ENGLISH AND AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS. 



Its character eiiice its first notice seems to 

 have changed. In the Divine records we are 

 told of " seven ears" coining up " in one 

 stiilk, full and good;''* and this appears to 

 account reachly for that and the adjoining 

 countries biinging forth such ti-emendons pro- 

 duce as " an liundred fold," or at the rate of 

 two bushels seed per acre — a produce of 2.5 

 quarts to the acre ! 



Now, however, we never see more than 

 one ear spi-ing from one stalk ; our climate 

 seems to have the unaccountable tendency to 

 diminish the number of ears to one, while in 

 Egyj>t six or seven ears are no uncommon 

 occurrence. The wheat plant appears to pos- 

 sess a wonderful power of repnxliiction under 

 favorable circumstaiices ; and the capability 

 to fonn ears out of stems seems in this coun- 

 Uy to be developed in producing steins from 

 one root. The writer has in his possession 

 at this moment a root of wheat of the creep- 

 ing red variety, wliich was given to him by 

 Colonel H. Croft, of Stillington, in Yorkshire, 

 which has seventy-tv^'o stems from it, full and 

 vigorous as is ))ossible to conceive. It is an- 

 other exti'aoi'dinary property of the wheat 

 plant that it possesses, polypi-like, the power 



of being subdivided in an ahnost infinite de- 

 gree. Mr. Lance, of Lewisham, obt<iined by 

 transplantation in some roots, 40 to .50 stems, 

 with ears from six to seven inches long, and 

 in one instance obtained actually the extraor- 

 dinary number of 190 ears. Mr. Miller, of 

 Cambridge, produced from one grain of cora 

 .3| pecks, or nearly one bushel. Mr. FuUa, 

 of Newcastle, in an experiment on sowing 

 wheat, gives the following comparative re- 

 sulls: 



No. 1 , transplanted into 6-inch lines, 62.^ bush per acre. 

 No.2, .. .. 9 .. 56i .. 



No.3, .. .. 12 .. 61 .. 



No. 4, drilled ..12 .. 65^.. 



No. 5, broadcast, 58 



The above are given by no means as advo- 

 cating or recommending tlie practice. It is 

 evidently illusory as regards a farmer attempt- 

 ing it ; and doubtless the situation was such, 

 when tlie triids were made, as no farmer 

 could possibly have, except perhaps on the 

 remains of a celery or cucumber bed ; but it 

 proves the amazing ca])abilities of the wheat 

 ])lant to reproduce its kind, with a degi-ee of 

 fecundity equaled only by its utility to man 

 kind. 



R. L. Colt, Esq., at Paterson, in the autumn of 1845, dibbled 1 quart of wheat 

 on less than a tenth of an acre ; and, though much of it was blown down by a 

 heavy storm, and much depredation yras committed by his poultry, which are of 

 all imaginable kinds, he cut and threshed 156 quarts of beautiful wheat. He has 

 put in an acre this year on the same plan, and promises to give us the result. 



He has this /ear reared some Oregon corn, generally upward of 12 feet high. 

 On one stalk, without selection, he had 4 ears of 24 rows each, and 1200 grains 

 to the ear. Here, then, is the astonishing production of 4,080 for 1 ; but Mr. C. 

 thinks this species of corn will not answer for this northern region. 



Mr. Colt is one of the few (for the public it might be better if there were more 

 of them) who, being able, farms for his own amusement, and to see, not how 

 much money can be made— for that is not a "part of his sastim," as O'Toole 

 says — but to see what may be done or in'roduced, that may be useful and turned 

 to account, by economical and practical men, for the general good of the country. 

 Would that all men of means were actuated by the same enlarged and generous 

 views I and that their whims or fancies would in a greater number of instances 

 take the same bent in favor of Agriculture and Horticulture ! Even their fail- 

 ures, when they try experiments, are more useful than the successes of churls 

 who hide their lights under a bushel. A lump of selfishness may make a suc- 



* Genesis, ch. xli., v. 22. 

 (837) 



