1847.] Chess. 123 



CHESS.— Bromus Secalinus. 



Few subjects of practical agriculture have a greater interest 

 than this. Substituted for wheat, not a more miserable crop 

 exists. Its appearance in a field of wheat is like the flague spot 

 on the human frame. To avoid it the farmer is obliged to see 

 that his seed wheat is pure, and utterly destitute of that seed. It 

 is the remark of many thorough farmers, that they never raise 

 chess. This would be adequate proof in any other case of the 

 origin of the plant. 



But the remark is often made that the fields in which the wheat 

 is winter-killed, abound in chess. The proof is palpable. Nu- 

 merous such fields have been seen this year. Is this adequate 

 reason for the opinion that wheat is converted into chess by the 

 frosts of winter ? I think not, for the following reasons. 



1. All the wheat fields in which the wheat has been killed by 

 the winter, do not abound in it, and some of them are free from 

 it. It is curious that the chess is not the uniform result of the 

 killing of wheat, if the supposed change is effected by the opera- 

 tion of winter. 



2. Wheat and chess are not found growing on the same root. 

 The contrary has been alleged, but an examination of the cases 

 has ever proved that this is not the fact. If wheat is converted 

 into chess, all the plants on the same root are the subjects of the 

 transformation. 



3. The distinctness and difference of the two. Wheat has a 

 long head, or spike, of sessile flowers, and does not send out 

 branches; chess has a diffusely divided stem ov panicle, in several 

 places towards the summit, in form like oats, and bearing short, 

 and rather close, short spikes or collections of flowers. The suppos- 

 ed change, therefore, affects the whole form and appearance of the 

 plant. The embryo plant is formed in the seed of wheat, and the 

 change must affect the very form of the embryo, and cause a 

 great modification of the whole plant. The fruit or seed, too, is 

 changed in its form, manner of growth, and character of the mat- 

 ter which it contains. No similar change occurs in other plants, 

 and there is no proof of the said change in this. In all their 

 characters, wheat and chess are more diverse than rye and wheat, 

 barley and wheat, oats and rye, barley and rye, apple and pear, 

 cherry and plum, and the like. Chess is not like a hybrid of 

 other plants. It is not the pollen which effects the change in 

 chess, but the form and peculiarities of chess exist before the 

 flowering and the evolution of the pollen take place. 



It has been said that rye has been changed into oats, but there 

 is needed any satisfactory proof of the fact; as there is that the 



