( 106 ), 
the groun’ of economy, employing less seed and dis- 
tiibuting what it does employ more equally. Nor 
will it be denied, that when wheat is very gh and 
labor very cheap, there may be a saving in the use 
of this machine ; but in all other circumstances the 
comparison is in favor of the other method, as it re- 
quires Jess time and fewer laborers, and as the waste 
and irregularity imputed to it, are, in hands practis- 
ed and steady, reduced to little or nothing. 
A third method of propagating wheat, viz. by trans- 
planting the suckers at regular distances from the 
seed bed, into another prepared to receive them, has 
been practiced on a small scale and is found to 
yield abundantly ; but it is so embarrassed with ex- 
pence as to render it entirely unfit for general use. 
Of the produce of wheat very different accounts 
have been given. To the extraordinary fertility of 
_ Byzatium, already mentioned, Pliny adds, that in 
Leontium, in Sicily, its produce was one hundred for 
one; vet Cicero, who had been questor of. that isl- 
and, asserts, that the produce of Sicily was but ten 
or twelve for one.(1) To conciliate these high and 
opposite authorities, M. Yvart has supposed, that 
ihe product mentioned by Cicero, was an average 
one of the whole island; and that that reported by 
Pliny, was the result of one or more transplanting 
experiments; an opinion rendered probable from 
the fact, that the parent stems and their offspring had 
been sent to Rome by the procurator of Augus- 
tus.(2) 
(1) Orat. contra Verrem. 
(2) Misit ex eo loco, divo Augusto procurator ejus, ex uno grano (vix credibile 
dictu) ccce. paueis minus germina. Pliny. 
