150 



Mode of Keeping Milk to prevent Souring. Vol. XII 



great modification of tiie 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 cha- 

 racters, 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 oals, but there is needed a satisfactory 

 proof of the fact; as there is that the brain 

 of man is at one time that of a fish ; at an- 

 other, of a crow; and at another, of an ape. 

 Such peculiarities must have been main- 

 tained to ascertain how far credulity can ex- 

 tend, and how large a part of men can be- 

 lieve themselves to be improved tadpoles. 



4. There are adequate sources of the seeds 

 of chess. They may have been sowed with 

 the wheat, and developed with greater fer- 

 tility as the wheat was absent from the' well 

 cultivated earth. Such a fact is often no- 

 ticed in the growth of other plants. 



The seeds may have been already in the 

 ground, and buried too deep for germination, 

 till cultivation placed them in a situation to 

 grow. This is a well-known fact in respect 

 to a multitude 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 remarkably free from chess. 

 The seed is probably always carried with the 

 wheat, and this begins the chess, which is 

 afterwards developed in the circumstances 

 favourable to its growth. One of these is 

 the absence of wheat by being winter-killed. 

 Let it be shown that the seed of chess is not 

 in the ground, before the influence of winter 

 ie 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 funda- 

 mental 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, or 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 trans- 

 formation 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 effiect is not to the 

 purpose, when the laws of matter, organized 

 or unorganized, are under consideration. 



A writer has, indeed, called chess a hy- 

 brid; but of what is it a hybrid? Where 

 are the two plants which are thus assimi- 

 lated? 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 are closely related, the mo- 

 dification can sometimes be effected. Its 

 infrequency, when the number and proximi- 

 ty of plants* is considered, is proof enough 

 of the difficulty. Besides, if it was an easy 

 process, hybrids would be common over the 

 fields. Wheat and rye are nearly related 

 species ; but they are grown together often 

 by the farmer, and yet both preserved dis- 

 tinct — not a hybrid of them appears. But 

 chess has generic characters, which separate 

 it far from those of wheat. Wonderful, in- 

 deed, would be the modification of the one 

 into the other. A hybrid of it must be, not 

 chess, but some yet unknown vegetable. 



Fields of wheat sometimes abound in 

 cockle, Lychnis githago, whose seeds are 

 so ruinous to good flour. Why has not this 

 plant been considered some modified wheat? 

 Because it is so different. What is the limit 

 to differences, when wheat and chess may 

 be said to have the same origin? 



The correct knowledge of chess leads di- 

 rectly to safe agricultural practice. The 

 remedy is as palpable as the difficulty. Let 

 the soil be freed from the seeds of chess. — 

 American Journal of Agriculture and Sci- 

 ence. 



Mode of Keeping Milk to prevent Sour- 



In passing a store a short time since, in 

 rather an obscure part of the city, and see- 

 ing a large number of milk cans standing 

 about the premises, I walked in and learned 

 the followinjj particulars from a fine healthy 

 woman, of middle age, who, with her daugh- 

 ter, a buxom girl of about sixteen, was stand- 

 ing behind the counter waiting upon custom- 

 ers. They sell the milk of three hundred 

 cows, principally consigned to them from 

 Orange county by dififerent farmers, which 

 brings three cents a quart at wholesale, and 

 four cents retail. Each can is marked with 



* A dozen or more plants of different kinds, and pe- 

 ver<il of them in flower at the same time, may be 

 found on a square foot of grass lands. 



