6o The Third and Fourth Generation 



portions of Palestine. Strangely enough our 

 European strains of wheat will not stand these 

 very conditions of drought that maintain so 

 commonly in the semiarid region where the 

 wild progenitor thrives. Apparently man has 

 selected it through these many ages for maxi- 

 mum yield under the most favored conditions 

 of soil and moisture, so that its hardihood has 

 disappeared. It is now a pampered weakling. 

 We lose half our cereal crop by drought. It is 

 hoped that some of the sturdiness of the original 

 stock may be bred into modern strains of wheat 

 by hybridization, so there may be produced a 

 wheat of high productivity that will grow even 

 in arid regions. It would add enormously to 

 the value of some of our western lands where 

 the rainfall is slight if such a crop could be 

 assured. The Indians of the Southwest have 

 achieved such a result with corn, and the corn 

 of the desert tribes is a marvel of adaptation, a 

 dwarf plant with small leaf surface but a large 

 area of shallow roots to absorb the dew and 

 light showers, and a single ear that is very large, 

 considering the size of the plant. 



