( 644 ) [Oct., 



CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 



I. AGKICULTUKE. 



Professor Church, of the Royal Agricultural College, has published 

 the results of some experiments instituted to ascertain whether the 

 denser grains of wheat will yield a larger and better crop. The con- 

 clusions indicated were that seed wheat of the greatest density produces 

 the densest seed and the largest amount of dressed corn ; that seed 

 wheat of a medium density generally gives the largest number of ears, 

 but the ears are poorer than those of the densest seed; that seed 

 wheat of medium density generally produces the largest number of 

 fruiting plants ; and that seed wheat which sinks in water, but 

 floats in a solution having the density of 1 ■ 247, is of a very low value, 

 yielding on an average only 34 ■ 4 pounds of dressed corn for every 

 100 yielded by the densest seed. These were the results given by 

 experimental plots, in each of which twenty seeds properly selected 

 had been planted. It also appears, from experiments on a larger 

 scale, over plots of twenty to forty perches apiece, that an average 

 return of about 13s. per acre is obtainable by submitting the seed 

 sown to a process which shall separate from it the lighter corns ; that 

 a very high standard of density is not required to secure this extra 

 return, the exclusion of about one-fifth of the ordinary seed corn being 

 probably sufficient ; and that the process of selection of seed in this 

 way, according to density, is easy and inexpensive. On the whole of 

 this series of experiments and their results, it is sufficient to remark 

 that a single inquiry of this kind is altogether inadequate to determine 

 or eliminate the really efficient agent or cause of the results that were 

 obtained. And even supposing this not to be external, but to be resident 

 in the seed itself that was selected with so much care, yet the 

 density of the grain is most likely not the cause, but the mere con- 

 comitant of the cause, to which the results are properly attributable. 

 It seems plain that the general character and habit of growth of a 

 plant is to some extent inherited from the past and transferable to the 

 future generation of it ; but it is not so easy to believe that any such 

 quality as density of seed is inherited or transferable. Such a quality 

 must be due to the nutrition of the plant, by both soil and air, 

 throughout the several stages of its growth, long after it has parted with 

 the original mother-seed. And the farmer who knows how a heavy, 

 starch-filled, full-sized berry, and a lean, horny, shrivelled sample of 

 grain at harvest time are often both of them obtained from the very 

 same seed corn — according to the quantity of seed he sows per acre, 

 the condition of the field, and the circumstances of the weather during 

 July and August — who therefore knows what are the principal and all- 

 powerful agents in the production of a good sample of whatever sort 

 he grows — will value at a very low rate that influence exerted by the 

 density of individual seed corns, which, all other things being equal, 

 may perhaps to some small extent be readable in the crop at harvest 

 time. 



