7i 8 The Winter and the Wheat Crop, [march, 



long remember the dreary close of 1903 : for weeks the land 

 was saturated, and it was with difficulty that the wheat was 

 sown during a short spell of dry weather in mid-November, 

 Indeed, on the heaviest soils it was not possible to prepare a 

 seed bed at all, and the diminished acreage returned as being 

 under wheat in 1904 only reflects the weather conditions which 

 prevailed towards the close of 1903 and early in T904. It will 

 be seen that the water passing through the drain gauge was a 

 very large proportion of the rainfall, and this, together with the 

 frequency with which the tile drains ran, means that the ground 

 must have been practically in a saturated condition during the 

 whole of the winter. The contrast presented by the current 

 winter is very great : after a dry September, both October and 

 November were very dry months, in which nearly the whole ot 

 the rainfall was retained by the surface soil, and though the 

 drains did run vigorously once in December the soil was in the 

 main dry up to the end of February. The early harvest and 

 the dry September enabled farmers to get well forward with 

 their cultivations, so that most men got the bulk of their 

 wheat sown in October or early November. Actually, too,, 

 an exceptionally large acreage appears to have been sown, 

 for men were tempted by the high prices prevailing and the 

 excellent seed bed that could be obtained with a minimum of 

 labour. 



We can almost divide the life of the wheat plant into three 

 stages : until March the growth above ground is small, and the 

 plant is almost wholly occupied in developing its root system ; 

 then comes a period of growth which lasts almost up to the: 

 flowering, after which the plant as a whole no longer increases 

 in weight, but is busy transferring the material it has already 

 formed from the stem and leaves to the seed. 



Now the future of the plant depends very largely upon the 

 development of a good root system to begin with, and roots 

 will not form in a saturated soil. Not only is there a lack of 

 air to stimulate them, but because there is such an ample supply 

 of water many roots are not required to keep the plant supplied 

 whereas in a dry soil the roots must spread and ramify in order 

 to maintain a proper supply of water to the plant. Some 

 experiments of Seelhorst's illustrate very well the dependence 



