62 



THE WHEAT CULTTJEIST. 



increased productiveness tlirongli earl}^ ripening and 

 adaptation to tlie wants of the country. 



"All attempts to ripen wheat early by sending farther 

 north for seed have signally failed, says a Kentucky 

 farmer. The experiment of sowing Canada-grown wheat 

 in Peimsylvania resulted in a ripening of the crop two 

 weeks later than that grown from native seed. As to the 

 cereals, which, as we have said, possess great flexibility, 

 and are readily subject to the influences of soil and 

 climate, we might naturally expect to find that wheat 

 grown for a long time in southern Tennessee or northern 

 Alabama, where the mean temperature of March equals, 

 if it does not surpass, that of April in northern Ken- 

 tucky and southern Ohio, would acquire a tendency to 

 early vegetation, which it would retain when removed 

 to more northern localities, and the plant be thus en- 

 abled by early matm-ity to escape the high heats of early 

 summer, and insect enemies which appear at the period 

 of the late ripening of northern-grown wheats. Though 

 it may be advisable to use southern-grown wheat for 

 seed, the rule, we fear, will not apply if such seed has 

 grown more than two or three degrees farther south. 

 All northern planters who have experimented mth 

 southern-gro^^'n seed-maize have learned that they can- 

 not ripen the crop if the seed has been brought from a 

 few degrees of lower latitude. This arises from the 

 sudden decline of the temperature of September and Octo- 

 ber, and the early access of killing frosts, which shorten 

 the period of growth to which the large and rank- 

 growing southern kinds of corn have been accustomed, 

 though the summer heats may have been the same as 

 they had known in their native place. In the case of 

 the southern wheats removed to a northern soil, the 



