ORIGIN OF WHEAT. 3 



merely pointing out here, that as yet no evidence, in any way 

 to be relied upon, has been presented in favour of the view- 

 that the wheat plant has been developed from a grass. 

 The difficulties in the way of the development theory are 

 great indeed, so great, that it takes a much more credulous 

 spirit to enable us to accept conjectures of so vague a kind 

 as true, than to believe that as for wise purposes, God created 

 man, so he created at once the wheat which was to form 

 then, as it does now, so important a part of his daily food. 

 Not to name here the scientific difficulties surrounding the 

 development theory, the common sense ones are sufficiently 

 startling to give us pause before we accept it as correct. 

 Thus, to glance at one only of the many considerations, 

 who amongst the early races of mankind saw with prophetic 

 glance the food-bearing wheat in the lowly grass which he 

 trod upon, and which waved in the wind but as a worth- 

 less weed to others, and by whose incessant care was its cul- 

 tivation carried out, till at last this care was rewarded by 

 seeing the grass converted into grain 1 If it took a modern 

 savan so much long and patient painstaking care to bring 

 about a result which, after all, to put it in the mildest way, 

 was very doubtful, is it possible to conceive that, in the 

 remote periods of man's history, some one, nay many, were 

 found to exercise a like care 1 It is difficult to conceive of 

 this j much less difficult surely is it to believe, if we can 

 accept of the fact that as the acorn has been produced from 

 the oak from the earliest stages of created things, so in 

 like manner has the wheat plant borne upon its stem 

 the life-supporting grain. Practice in farming will be 

 none the less wisely followed out if the farmer, in place 

 of endeavouring to prove that it is by the exercise of 

 man's wisdom and his guiding care that we owe the wheat, 

 he believes in patient faith, and trust that it " is one of 

 those natural blessings " which a good and kind Provi- 

 dence bestowed upon him. 



