70 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH GRASSES. 
Each of these forms is now separately saved for further 
experiment, whilst the shed seeds of the plot are left to 
grow as they would do in nature, with the view of demon- 
strating the downward progress by the reverse methods to 
those adopted in the cultivated ones. 
We may add here, that in the article Avena in Morton’s 
Cyclopedia of Agriculture, Dr. Lindley referred to the pro- 
bability of the wild origin thus demonstrated, suggesting 
that the cultivated oat is “a domesticated variety of some 
wild species, and may be not improbably referred to Avena 
strigosa, the bristle-pointed oat, which would become the 
common oat by a slight alteration of the form and division 
of its pales and the loss of one of its awns—changes much 
less considerable than are known to have taken place in 
other cultivated plants.” 
The experiments, as far as they have now gone, show us 
in the clearest possible manner that the Avena fatua is the 
parent of our cultivated oat, and that not only of one but 
of more forms or varieties produced in the same space of 
time and by the same series of operations,—conclusions 
which cannot be other than interesting to the botanist, 
whilst to the farmer they offer considerations no less curi- 
ous in theory than important in a practical point of view. 
If we can produce the cultivated from the wild weed oat, 
it follows that the weed may result from a degeneracy of 
the cultivated form; and this will serve to show how true 
the instincts of the old-fashioned farmer not unfrequently 
were, as we remember that some years since a main objec- 
tion to the growth of oats on stiff lias clays was, that they 
left behind them wild oats; and all who have had to deal 
with them asa weed, as not unfrequently occurs on the 
stiffer lands of the lias, Forest marble, or Oxford clays, may 
well dread any cause of its increase. As a botanical notion 
this was never well received, but viewed as impossible by 
the species-maker ; however, actual experiment has at length 
demonstrated its truth, and it may just be mentioned that a 
confirmation of this has in the mean time been arrived at 
