200 APPENDIX. [March, 



This produced nearly three times as much corn (grain) as No. 14, and 

 a third more straw." — Ibid, p. 24. 



" From careful observation, it appears that some varieties, if sown 

 the second day, differ in their period of flowering, many days ; even 

 ten or twelve intervening." — Ibid, p. 64. 



H. 



ON USING THE BEST SEED. 



" Some people have recommended the sowing of blighted and mil- 

 dewed wheat, because it will vegetate, though certainly the recommen- 

 dation, if carried into practice, would be attended with imminent 

 danger to those who practise it. That light or defective wheat will 

 vegetate or produce a plant, we are not disposed to contradict ; but 

 that it will vegetate as briskly, or put out a stem of equal strength, 

 and capable of withstanding the severe winter blasts as those produced 

 from sound seed, we must be excused from not believing. Let it only 

 be considered that a plant of young wheat, unless when very early 

 sown, lives three or four months, in a great measure, upon the nour- 

 ishment which it derives from the parent seed, and that such nourish- 

 ment can in no view of the subject be so great when the parent is lean 

 and emaciated as when sound, healthy and vigorous. Let it also be 

 remembered, that a plant produced from the best and weightiest seed, 

 must, in every case, under a parity of other circumstances, have a 

 stronger constitution at the outset, which necessarily qualifies it to 

 push on with greater energy when the season of growth arrives. In- 

 deed, the economy of nature would be overturned if any other result 

 followed." — Brawn on Rural Affairs, Vol. ii. p. 31. 



" An experienced agriculturist asserts with confidence, that he has 

 seen fields partly sown with sound and partly with mildewed wheat, 

 and that the difference was discernible at one glance even in the win- 

 ter months, during the first stage of their growth." 



I give below, a decisive experiment in favor of using perfectly 

 ripened and well-harvested seed wheat, in preference to that which is 

 light or imperfect. 



"The late Benjamin Bell, Esq., in October, 1783, sowed a field of 

 twelve acres at IJunthill, in Roxburghshire, with 54 bushels of wheat, 



