124 Chess. [Sept., 



brain of man is at one time that of a fish; at another, of a crow; 

 and at anotlier, of an ape. Such puerilities must have been 

 maintained to ascertain how far credulity can extend, and how 

 large a part of men can believe themselves to be improved tad- 

 poles. 



4. There are adequate sources of the seeds of chess. They may 

 have been sowed with the wheat, and developed with greater 

 fertility as the wheat was absent from the well-cultivated earth. 

 Such a fact is often noticed in the growth of other plants. 



The seeds may have been already in the ground, and buried 

 too deep for geimination, till cultivation placed them in a situa- 

 tion to grow. This is a well-known fact in respect to a multi- 

 tude of plants, whose seeds are long preserved in the ground, and 

 germinate on the proper exposure. 



The wheat of new lands, if the seed is usually pure, is re- 

 markably free from chess. The seed is probably always carried 

 with the wheat, and this begins the chevSS, which is afterwards 

 developed in the circumstances favorable to its growth. One of 

 these is the absence of wheat by being winter-killed. Let it be 

 shovm that the seed of chess is not in the ground, before the influ- 

 ence of winter is made the cause of its appearance. 



5. Chess propagates itself by seeds like other grains. Thus it 

 is like any other plant, as the " herb yielding seed after its kind, 

 and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself after its kind," 

 a principle fundamental in human belief. If cold and frost may 

 change wheat to chess, why does not heat change chess to wheat? 

 If the farmer intends his wheat shall be free from the seeds of 

 useless, or injurious, oi- noxious plants, he must remove the seeds 

 from his seed-wheat, and weed out the plants from the growing 

 grain. 



It is of no avail to say, may not the transformation of wheat to 

 chess take place? It is inconsistent with all the known laws of 

 vegetation, and the violation of fixed laws, by natural causes, is 

 impossibility. What miraculous power might effect is not to the 

 purpose, when the laws of matter, organized or unorganized, are 

 under consideration. 



A writer has, indeed, called chess a hybrid; but of what is it 

 a hybrid? Where are the two plants which are thus assimilated? 

 A hybrid is formed by means of two closely related species, the 

 pollen of one being transferred to the flower of the other. If the 

 two plants arc closely related, the modification can somc^times be 

 effected. Its infrequency, when the number and proximity of 

 plants* is considered, is proof enough of the difliculty. Besides, 



• A dozen or more plants of difTerent Kinds, and several of them in flower 

 at the same lime, may be found on a square foot of grass lands. 



