xii IMPROVING CULTIVATED PLANTS 149 



different climates. An enormous number of varieties 

 have been produced to meet these needs. It would 

 not be difficult, one author tells us, to name some 

 thousands of different kinds of wheat. The same 

 author describes in detail sixty kinds, which he 

 says are the most important kinds for the farmer 

 in England and France. Things have altered a 

 good deal since the Stone Period, when there were 

 one common kind and four other rare kinds ! 



The sixty kinds most useful in England and 

 France have all their special properties, and man 

 has to learn, by slow and sometimes painful ex- 

 perience, which kind is most useful in each particular 

 situation. 



For instance, there is rather an interesting 

 little story about spring wheat in the eastern parts 

 of France. During the terrible war of 1870-71 

 some of the provinces were so ravaged by war that 

 it was impossible for the peasants to sow their 

 wheat in autumn. By the spring of 1871, how- 

 ever, the war was over, and hope began to revive 

 among the people. One of the most wonderful 

 things, perhaps, in the history of the world is the 

 way in which the French people set to work to 

 repair the fearful destruction which that short war 

 made. Pasteur, the celebrated biologist, was one of 

 the great Frenchmen who set themselves the task 

 of making France great again, not on the field of 



