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On Spelt z. By James Mease ^ m. d. 



Read March 8th, l808i 



This variety of wheat is much cuhivated in the mid- 

 die counties of Pennsylvania, and is highly prised. 

 In answer to some queries which I sent to Caleb Kirk, 

 of York county, I received the following statement. 



*' The speltz I have concluded to send by the mail 

 stage. Thou wishest to know the qualities of it which 

 induce the farmers to cultivate it, I therefore inform 

 thee, that it does much better than wheat, in flats of cold 

 ground, not being so subject to freezing out in the win- 

 ter, and I have often known it sown in a part of the 

 field which was esteemed too poor for wheat, but whe- 

 ther it succeeds better than wheat in very poor land, I 

 am not quite able to determine. One thing I am fully 

 convinced of, namely, that it will do well in land that is 

 too rich for wheat.* When shelled, it produced from 

 40 to 50 per cent : It then yields flour well, as the bran 

 is thin. The flour is somewhat more yellow than that 

 of wheat, and of course w^ould not suit for merchant 



^ Europeans who have formed their opinions of American 

 agriculture from the misrepresentations of British tourists 

 among us, will be surprised at the remark made respecting 

 land being too rich for wheat in the United States ; and yet 

 nothing is more familiar than the (act, to the farmers of Penn- 

 sylvania. In the western counties of this state, wheat sown 

 upon such land, will lodge before maturity ; and hence it is 

 necessary to take more than one exhausting crop of hemp, 

 or Indian corn to prepare the land for wheat. 



