IN EXTRA-TROPICAL COUNTRIES. 341 



Chinese culture plant, to nearly 5,000 years. In Japan wheat is of 

 extraordinary precocity (Lartigne), and it is greatly recommended 

 as a forage plant. This is not the place to enter into details about 

 a plant universally known ; it may therefore suffice merely to men- 

 tion that three primary varieties must be distinguished between the 

 very numerous sorts of cultivated Wheat : 1. Var. muticum, T. 

 hybernum (L.), the Winter Wheat or Unbearded Wheat ; 2. Var. 

 aristatum, T. sestivum (L.), the Summer Wheat or Bearded Wheat ; 

 3. Var. adhrerens, T. Spelta '(L.), Wheat with fragile axis and ad- 

 herent grain. Metzger enumerates as distinct kinds of cultivated 

 Wheat : 



T. vulgare (Vill.), which includes among other varieties the ordinary 

 Spring Wheat, the Fox Wheat, and the Kentish Wheat. It com- 

 prises also the best Italian sorts for plaiting straw bonnets and 

 straw hats, for which only the upper part of the stem is used, 

 collected before the ripening of the grain, and bleached through 

 exposure to the sun while kept moistened. 



T. turgidum (L.), comprising some varieties of White and Red Wheat, 

 also the Clock Wheat and the Revet Wheat. 



T. durum (Desfont.), which contains some sorts of the Bearded Wheat. 



T. Polonicum (L.), the Polish Wheat, some kind of which is well 

 adapted for peeled Wheat. 



T. Spelta (L.), the Spelt Corn or Dinkel Wheat, a kind not readily 

 subject to disease, succeeding on soil of very limited fertility, not 

 easily attacked by birds, furnishing a flour of excellence for cakes, 

 also yielding a superior grain for peeled Wheat. For preparing the 

 latter it is necessary to collect the spikes while yet somewhat green, 

 and to dry them in baking-houses. 



T. dicoccum (Schrank). (T. amyleum, Ser.) The Emmer Wheat. 

 Its varieties are content with and prolific on poor soil, produce 

 excellent starch, are mostly hardy in frost and not subject to 

 diseases. To this belongs the Arras Wheat of Abyssinia, where a 

 few other peculiar sorts of Wheat are to be found. A large-grained 

 variety of Wheat is baked in Persia like rice (Colvill). 



T. monococcum (L.). St. Peter's Corn, which is hardier than most other 

 Wheats ; exists in the poorest soils, but produces grains less adapted 

 for flour than for peeled Wheat. 



Tropseolum majus, Linne. 



Peru. This showy perennial climber passes with impropriety under 

 the name of Nasturtium. The herbage and flowers serve as cress, 

 and are also considered antiscorbutic. A smaller species T. minus 

 (L.), also from Peru, can likewise be chosen for a cress-salad; both 

 besides furnish in their flower-buds and young fruits a substitute 

 for capers. A volatile oil of burning taste can be distilled from the 

 foliage of both, and this is more acrid even than the distilled oil of 



