EVENINO DISCOURSES. 389 



II. 



Fkiday, August 27. 



A Grain of Wheat from the Field to the Table. 

 By Sir Daniel Hall, K.C.B., F.R.S. 



In the history of mankind there are no processes older, more essential, or 

 move universal than the growing, grinding, and baking of wheat and its kindred 

 food grains. 



What, then, has the British Association to do with so fundamental a busi- 

 nees, brought to something like perfection long before anything we can call 

 science existed ? 



That is precisely what I want to tell you to-night. 



Countless years have elapsed since primitive man took the momentous step 

 of sowing a little of the wild grain he had hitherto been content to gather, 

 in the hope of saving himself some trouble in collecting the ne.\t year's crop. 

 Millions of men have spent their lives in growing wheat. All sorts of rewards — 

 nay, the very life of the community — ^have attended on improvements in the 

 crop. What can there be to learn about it now ? 



Yet at every stage in the story of the grain of wheat from the seed-bed 

 to the breakfast table we find that w© do not know what we need to know in 

 order to get on with the business of making two grains grow where one grew 

 before. I want to show you that, however old, however fundamental the 

 industry, science comes in at every turn, and research, calling for all our 

 imagination, skill, and determination, is required if progress is to continue. 



All biologists would agree that development demands an abundant food 

 supply, just as fine flowers want a fat soil. Now, the population of the 

 world is rapidly growing up to, if it has not for a time exceeded, its available 

 food supply, and only by research and the utilisation of the fruits of that 

 research are we going to obtain more food. If I had to name one remedy 

 for the present discontents it would be more wheat, and as we are nearing 

 the limits of the potential wheat land we must therefore set about the other 

 problem of getting more from what land we have. Beginning with the grain 

 of wheat, we find it consists of a tiny embryo, that part that possesses life, 

 and the endosperm or food store, which is to nourish it until it can push a 

 green leaf above the ground and begin to feed upon the air and the soil. 

 The embryo's food store is our food supply ; flour is only the powdered 

 endosperm. 



In its dry state, when it cannot draw upon the endosperm, the embi'yo 

 soon dies, and with it the whole grain; some in one year, more in two; few 

 can survive for ten years. Mummy wheat is a myth. Can you excite the seed 

 before sowing by electricity or other means to grow better and give a bigger 

 crop? Experiments are being made, but the results are dubious. Probably 

 not, because the seed only starts the plant in life; its growth and yield depend 

 on development after the start, on the soil, the manure, the weather. 



It is usual in England to sow two and a-half bushels of seed wheat to 

 the acre; properly managed, half a bushel or less would cover the field with 

 the necessary plants for a maximum crop. Experiments are on foot to get a 

 mat'hine that will sow economically. Even if we can save a bushel an acre of 

 seed the country would gain 3 per cent, of its output of wheat, worth well 

 over a million pounds a year. 



There are hundreds of kinds of wheat — early and late, tall and short, close- 

 packed or open in the ear, varying in colour and size and in other ways. Each 

 sort breeds true because the flower is self-fertilised. If we pick out each year 

 the longest ears in the field, or the plumpest berries, and grow only from them, 

 no improvement results. .Selection of this kind has been tried for fifty years 

 without result. Change, and with it improvement, only comes when varieties 

 are crossed; then we get new varieties. The scientific breeder working on 

 Mendel's principles can in a few years raise and fix a new wheat, combining 

 the -ood points of both parents. New English wheats have been bred in the 



