THE KIND AND QUALITY OF THE SEED. 5 



being confined to districts where soil is cold and stony. 

 The yield of this class of wheats is generally high in quan- 

 tity, but in quality is low and coarse ; but the straw not 

 being, as in the other class of wheat, perfectly hollow, but, 

 partially filled up with a pith-like spongy substance, is 

 strong, and capable of standing well under adverse circum- 

 stances, and is useful for thatching purposes. The varieties 

 of turgid wheats named by Professor Wilson are Eivet 

 common, Eivet bone, Egyptian or Mummy wheat. 



3. Winter and Spring Wheat. The class of Triticum 

 sativum has been in agricultural nomenclature, and is still 

 by some divided into two summer or spring wheat, Triti- 

 cum sativum; and winter wheat, Triticum hibernum. This 

 distinction is, however, now discarded, as it is admitted 

 that by change of circumstances their characteristics may 

 be changed also, so that by repeatedly sowing winter wheat 

 in the spring, we can alter its ripening capacities so as to 

 make it spring wheat, and vice versa. " Spring and autumn 

 wheat," says Professor Buckman, " are not specifically dis- 

 tinct ; both the one and the other may be sown in any 

 month of the year, a subject upon which I have experi- 

 mented again and again, and thus given a spring wheat 

 the habit of a winter one, and the reverse." 



4. The kind or variety and the quality of the Seed. 

 The whole subject is one invested with the deepest interest 

 to the agriculturist desirous to obtain the maximum of pro- 

 duce with the minimum of outlay. In an exceedingly 

 interesting and able paper by Mr. W. Wallace Fyfe, in a re- 

 cent number of the Journal of the Bath and West of Eng- 

 land Society, on " Farm Seeds and Seeding," there are some 

 very suggestive remarks on this very point, of which we 

 give here a very brief resume, referring the reader to the 

 article itself for fuller details. After referring to the un- 

 fortunately too general ignorance on the subject prevailing 

 amongst farmers, Mr. Fyfe draws attention to the evidence 

 which so many fields of wheat show as to the carelessness 

 with which the seeds have been selected, bringing about 

 a general discrepancy of result ; and in place of having the 



