280 



that's it ; 



spikelets are very compactly set 

 upon the radius, which ren- 

 ders the chaff short and broad. 



707. 



70G. 



The bearded wheats are gene- 

 rally distinguished by the long 

 shape of the chaff, and the open 

 position of the spikelets ; but 

 cultivation has the 5 

 effect of decreasing 

 the strength of the §§ 

 beard, and setting 

 the spikelets closer 

 together. The finest 

 grains of wheat, 5, are short, 

 round, and plump, with the 

 bosom distinctly marked and well 

 filled up.* 



Of the common wheat there are many va- 

 rieties, but the most permanent are the red 

 and white grained, and the spring wheat, which 

 is generally red. The Hertfordshire reds and 

 whites, woolly-eared, awned, and nearly fifty 

 other names are merely sub- varieties of the 

 red and white. Wheat answers best when 

 treated as a biennial, though it does not remain 

 above one year in the ground. Provided the 

 soil be well prepared and dry, and the grain 

 sown in time, the plants do not suffer from the 

 greatest cold of our climate, or even that of 

 Russia. In the latter country, and in the 

 northern counties of Britain, the fields are 

 covered with snow, which retaining a tempera- 

 ture of from 30 to 32 degrees, the plants are 



• Stephens's Book of the Farm. 



found to vegetate and establish their roots 

 firmly in the soil. The snow is not thawed off 

 till the weather, is decidedly warm in spring, 

 when the plants make rapid progress, appa- 

 rently more so than in warmer climates. Wheat, 

 like all culmiferous plants, may be said to have 

 two distinct sets of roots ; the seminal or tap- 

 root, and the coronal or surface-root, the for- 

 mer proceeding from the embryo, and the latter 

 from the first joint of the stem. The former 

 seem intended to nourish the plant while young, 

 to fix it to the soil, and to penetrate into the 

 sub-soil for water ; the latter to search along 

 the surface among the lighter materials of the 

 soil for nutritive particles. There is in the 

 Banksian Museum, a stalk of wheat of ordinary 

 length with a tap-root six feet long, which had. 

 penetrated into a sub-soil of limestone brush, 

 and was taken up in digging a drain.* 



We have already given a great 

 many interesting particulars of 

 insects, 180 ; but we must now 

 say something of a few of 

 6 those that 



wing their 

 busy way 

 around us 

 in our 

 summer 

 rambles. 

 The first 

 of these is 

 the honey- 

 bee, 6. Of all the insect tribes 

 none have more justly excited 

 the attention and admiration of 

 mankind than the bee. 



7 



708. 



709. 



A hive of bees consists of from 

 twelve to sixteen or eighteen 



* Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Plants 



