96 Elementary Species 



and needs, and this is a question of improve- 

 ment. 



The fact that our cultivated plants are com- 

 monly mixtures of different sorts, has not al- 

 \rays been known. The first to recognize it seems 

 to have been the Spanish professor of botany, 

 Mariano Lagasca, who published a number of 

 Spanish papers dealing with useful plants and 

 botanical subjects between 1810 and 1830, 

 among them a catalogue of plants cultivated in 

 the Madrid Botanical Garden. Once when he 

 was on a visit to Colonel Le Couteur on his farm 

 in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands off the 

 coast of France, in discussing the value of the 

 fields of wheat, he pointed out to his host, that 

 they were not really pure and uniform, as was 

 thought at that time, and suggested the idea 

 that some of the constituents might form a 

 larger part in the harvest than others. In a 

 single field he succeeded in distinguishing no 

 less than 23 varieties, all growing together. 

 Colonel Le Couteur took the hint, and saved the 

 seeds of a single plant of each supposed va- 

 riety separatel}^ These he cultivated and mul- 

 tiplied till he got large lots of each and could 

 compare their value. From among them he 

 then chose the variety producing the greatest 

 amount of the finest, whitest and most nu- 

 tritious flour. This he eventually placed in the 



