FARMERS' REGISTER-CHESS OR CHEAT. 



305 



tryman, David Thomas of Cayuga county, whose re- 

 marks will follow. — [Ed. Farm Reg. 



CHESS [or chkat] produced from wheat. 



From the Genesee Farmer. 



'"He thalis first in his own cause scemfth right; but his neighbor 

 Cometh afterward and proveth him, (or setteth him right.)" 



Notwithstanding the subject of wlieat turning to 

 chess, has been hammered over and hammer liar- 

 dened, the rust seems to cleave to it yet, as I per- 

 ceive by some late notices in the Farmer. It ap- 

 pears, I will allow, that the communications are 

 heterodoxical. As much strength will be derived 

 from Heman Chapin's experiment, I shall first en- 

 deavor by sound philosophy to convince the public 

 mind, that his process was not agreeable to direc- 

 tion, inasmuch as he cleaned the wheat instead of 

 planting the heads. Suffice it also to state farther, 

 that I took the wheat heads from the north side of 

 a stack, and the west side of the barn, where 1 sup- 

 pose the wheat had been ke})t in a moist state, and 

 so excluded from the sun, in such a manner as not 

 to dry or shrink at all. This is the manner in 

 which I account for the wheat not turning to chess. 



I shall now proceed to give a true statement of 

 my own experiments. I took from a small lot, 

 where nothing had been suffered to tread the ground 

 after harvest, enough wheat heads to plant eight 

 hills, every one of which produced chess, except 

 one, which produced two straws of wheat and the 

 remainder chess ; those are spoken of by my friend 

 Mead Atwater. In the next place, I sent one of 

 my hired men, in whom I have the utmost confi- 

 dence, who gathered and cleaned in the best man- 

 ner about half a pint of wheat, which was sown in 

 a clean place where other wheat was on three sides 

 of it, with a void place on one side, twenty rods in 

 length, and six feet wide; tliis location was chosen 

 to cheat the pigeons it" they came to exchange com- 

 modities. This lot contains five acres, and is nearly 

 clean from chess; tiie seed was ploughed in care- 

 fully, and dragged in the -best manner afterward. 

 That which my hired man sowed, was carefully 

 hoed in, and nearly one half of it turned to chess, 

 while the surrounding wheat is nearly clean. 



I also sowed of the same seed as the five acre lot 

 above mentioned, a lot of three acres after wheat. 

 The ground was nearly clean from chess, but a 

 plenty of wheat and wheat heads was buried in with 

 the plough, and the seed sown and well harrowed 

 in. The field now is one fourth chess, and in addi- 

 tion, there is a breadth of aliout two rods in width, 

 extending triangularly through the field, which is 

 three fourths chess, caused by the waters overflow- 

 ing late last spring, and remaining so long as to kill 

 the wheat, so much as to turn it a whitish color; 

 the top of course decayed, while the root remained, 

 and vegetable life spiang up anew and produced a 

 large growth of chess. Another mode of manage- 

 ment, producing chess, was, the cutting off a piece 

 of wheat after it could be ascertained with certainty 

 by examination, that it was wheat vegetation rose 

 up from these roots and produced nothing but chess. 

 Some of these chess stalks growed upon the side of 

 the old wheat stalk more than one inch from the 

 surface of the earth, resembling a young shoot from 

 the bud, after the old stock isXut off. "This is the 

 crop which the farmer would reaj), by feeding 

 his field late to prevent its lodging down. Fur- 

 thermore, the half acre sown by Ambrose Burr 



Vol. 1—39 



upon new burnt land with entirely clean seed, has 

 brought forth chess enough to seed one fourth part 

 of it again, if chess would yield chess as sponta- 

 neously as wheat does. 



I also planted one head of chess, which has borne 

 chess of the size of caraway seed; which I intend 

 sowing this fall, but do not apprehend any seed ano- 

 ther year. 



Thus I have raised chess in four different ways, 

 and have a fif\h one on trial ; the result will be given 

 hereafter, when sufficiently tested. All the speci- 

 mens will be preserved for future inspection. 



I have observed, to my satisfi\ction, that the chess 

 from rye, even when sown on our poorest land, 

 grows much higher than the wheat chess, although 

 the wheat is sown on good ground; and the fiax 

 chess, although sown on the richest of land, will 

 not grow higher than flax. I want every farmer 

 to take particular notice how completely they pre- 

 serve the stature of their respective legitimate fa- 

 thers, as much so as the human species or brute cre- 

 ation. I think D. T. is under another mistake. 

 As to those doing more good* in the economy of 

 wheat- raising, who pull the chess out of their fields, 

 than those who do not soav wheat after wheat, pre- 

 pare their seed and ground in a proper manner, put 

 the crop in well, and in good season too, I shall 

 leave for the farmer to determine. If by observing 

 the above, is a preventive of seven eighths of the 

 quantity of chess usually grown; then, I see no ne- 

 cessity of continuing to raise this surplus quantity, 

 for the sake of pulling it up again — a penny saved 

 is worth two earned. 



The remark made by my good friend David Tho- 

 mas, that my allusions were too personal, I do not 

 admit, and would be very happy in a private con- 

 versation, to convince him that I only intended to 

 give two shillings for twenty-five cents, honest 

 measure. I still acknowledge his superior talents, 

 and that he makes but very few mistakes. 



GIDEON RAMSDELI/. 



Perrinton, 7th month, 1833. 



CHESS RESULT OF EXPERIMENTS. 



From the Genesee Farmer. 



If the notion of wheat turning into chess, was 

 purely speculative, like another notion which has 

 also been prevalent, to wit : that swallotos winter 

 in ihn mud under water, a few remarks on its ex- 

 travagance would be sufficient, and both might be 

 quietly consigned to oblivion. The believers in 

 the spurious origin of chess, however, practice 

 what they preach. They are confident that pure 

 wheat will generate the nuisance; and this being 

 a law of nature, not to be abrogated, they submit 

 to have their fields overrun without making the 

 exertions necessary to prevent it. 



It must therefore be evident that to exterminate 

 it from our country, that portion of our farmers 

 must be induced to view chess in a different light; 

 and to consider it nothing but a iveed, independent 

 in its nature, not indebted to any other plant for its 

 existence, and only growing from its own seed. 

 If some of them should prove dull or intractable 

 scholars, we ought not to be discouraged, nor grow 

 weary of \vell doing. We are evidently gaining 

 ground. Every sophism, every trait of false logic 

 that we detect and expose, must discountenance or 

 diminish their party ; and if some of our readers. 



