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seed. Some eight years ago 1 commenced a series of ex- 

 periments similar to the above with the following results, 

 viz: I sowed a small quantity each year in drills 18 inches 

 apart, and single kernels scattered by hand six inches to a 

 foot apart in the drills. This was hoed about three times 

 each year. When harvested selections were made from 

 the best heads only, and sowed and tended in the same 

 manner again. At the end of six years I commenced to 

 increase the quantity, sowing at the rate of three pecks per 

 acre, which produced equally as much wheat per acre as 

 my other wheat sown 1J and 1J bushels per acre. My 

 other wheat had been moderately improved by running 

 the seed over a coarse screen, which would take out from J- 

 to J of the wheat. I have not yet succeeded to the extent 

 of others who have preceded me, but I have made a decided 

 improvement, and think that a few years more of similar 

 work would approximate the results of Major Hallett, if it 

 did not equal him. 



Perhaps it will not be inappropriate here to put in a 

 selection on the "Cultivation of Wheat." [Nat'l Agr'l 

 Report, 1868, p. 416. 



CULTIVATION OF WHEAT. 



"Public attention has been directed. -in the recent 

 reports of this department, to the propriety of making 

 experiments in the cultivation of wheat in wide drilling 

 and thin seeding. The fact that millions of acres of wheat 

 are annually overrun with weeds' and that sod lands, im- 

 perfectly pulverized, often yield larger crops than the same 

 soil in a better mechanical condition, but thoroughly seed- 

 ed with wild plants of rampant growth, ought to suggest 

 the probable success of a system of cultivation of growing 

 wheat whereby it might have unchecked opportunity for 

 growth, tillering, and perfect ripening, with such robust- 

 ness of stalk as to preclude the liability of falling, and con- 

 sequent imperfection and loss of grain. 



