162 



GENESEE FARMER. 



July. 



Mutability of Wheat and other Cultivated Plants. 



Mr. Editor : — I do not desire to review that 

 interminable subject the transmutations of the 

 grains, but design to give some facts, as stated 

 by some of the best authorities extant, and which 

 are entirely antagonistical to the doctrine of the 

 immutability of genus or species. 



A learned German author, Doct. Wissenborn, 

 in the Magazine of Natural History for 1842, 

 asserts, that oats sown in the spring and allowed 

 to be kept down by pasturage, so as not to make 

 seed stems, and kept over till the next spring, 

 invariably produce rye, and relates it as a well 

 known fact. 



Prof. LiNDLEY, than whom no man stands 

 higher as a learned philosopher emd botanical in- 

 vestigator, states that, "at the request of the Mar- 

 <juis of Bristol, the Rev. Lord Arthur Harvey, 

 in the year 1843, sowed a handful of oats and 

 treated them in the manner recommended, by 

 stopping the seed stems, and the produce, in the 

 year 1844, was for the most part very slender 

 eai-s of harley, having much the appearance of 

 n/«, a little wheat, and some oats, samples of 

 which are now before me." 



He also adverts to the extraordinary, but cer- 

 tain fact of the orchidaceous plants, that change 

 their forms from seed, as different from the orig- 

 inal as wheat, rye, and oats, by some mysterious 

 agency. Indeed so well known and appreciated 

 Is this fact, that peculiar hot-houses are erected 

 in Europe, to accomodate and multiply the re- 

 markable family of Orchids. 



Why may not wheat, rye, barley, and even 

 oats, be derived from one common progenitor, 

 -which the mysterious laws of nature have devel- 

 oped, in the secret work shop of unimaginable 

 past ages ? Strange changes are within even the 

 memory of type and paper. The cabbage was 

 an insignificant trailing sea plant, as was also 

 asparagus ; the potato from a wild ground nut, 

 now under its improved state its failure is threat- 

 ening millions with starvation. In short, three 

 quarters of all our culinary vegetables have been 

 changed by feeding, crossing, and the action of 

 climate. 



It is a well ascertained fact that the fungi, a 

 distinct but low order of vegetation, take their 

 distinctive forms from the peculiar circumstances 

 of their production, as much as from the original 

 germ or seed ; indeed so much so that Botanists 

 have wonderfully reduced the number of species 

 heretofore laid down as distinct. 



The Algfe (sea weed,) placed under favorable 

 circumstances, change into plants of a very dif- 

 ferent structure, and much more elevated in the 

 scale of vegetable organization. Perfectly de- 

 veloped and highly improved animals and vege- 

 tables, have a strong tendency to deteriorate — to 

 go backward, on the leas> omission of the pecu- 

 llaj- treatment, that the experience of ages have 



taught as the requirements of improved organic 

 being. May not the cerealic grains and grasses 

 have one common origin — a unit of original ex- 

 istence ? — and the production of chess be a re- 

 lapse to, or towards its original existence 1 



Man, without education, would be speechlefis, 

 and the second generation all but one of the 

 quadrumani ; the kind and faithful dog would 

 become the ferocious wolf; the hog, the wild 

 and untamable wild boar of the primeval forests. 

 Every thing is subject to transition and change, 

 from its original type to perfection, and for aught 

 we know back again on the retrograde scale to 

 primitive insignificance. 



Fresh water molusks, in a marine menstruum, 

 change their vital organization and even the 

 structure of their outward covering, and probably 

 a very small and gradual change in the composi- 

 tion of our atmosphere, from the neighborhood 

 of cemetery influence, or other adventitious cir- 

 cumstances, would people this earth with a race 

 of strangers to the ghosts of the departed, both in 

 the animal and vegetable kingdoms. 



Although the prevailing opinion among vege- 

 table physiologists is decidedly averse to the doc- 

 trine of transmutation, yet as we are of yester- 

 day and know nothing, every thing that is not 

 capable of analysis and demonstration, should be 

 received cum grano salis. 



The writer has, in fifty years experience, ob- 

 served so many cases of the wonderful quantity 

 of chess produced from pure seeding, within his 

 own observation and from undoubted authority 

 from others, which can in no possible way be 

 accounted for, or explained, except by transmu- 

 tation, that his belief in the immutability of sj/e- 

 cies is shaken to the foundation. 



L. Barkes. 



Monroe county, N. Y., April, 1847. 



A Plea for the Birds. 



NUMBER TWO. 



I AM a lover of Nature. I love her in her 

 playful mood ; I love her even in her wildest 

 state. I love inanimate nature much, but ani- 

 mated nature more. I love her for her influence 

 on the heart. I have studied books ; I have 

 studied men ; I have studied nature. If there is 

 any thing that will humanize, civilize, socialize, 

 and I almost said christianize, the soul of man, it 

 is the study and contemplation of the works of 

 nature. I have yet to find an admirer of simple, 

 unsullied nature, a lover of birds, and trees, and 

 animated groves, who has not a warm and benev- 

 olent heart. And I have yet to find one who- 

 looks with a cold indifference on the works of 

 creation, whether animate or inanimate, who has 

 not a cold and selfish heart. And I envy not 

 the feelings and the happiness of that man who- 

 sees no value in any thing, except that wliich is- 



