258 Varieties of Wlieat and Methods of Imin-ovinrj them. 
Wilson, tlieu Principal of tlie lioyal Agricultural College at 
Cirencester, mentioned, in referring to Messrs. Raynbird and 
Maund's experiments, the advantages to plants and animals of 
a process of crossing. He added, on the authority of Gartner, 
" that this process in reference to the cerealiacan hardly be said 
to have had any existence." That this is still true is proved by 
the absence of any paper on the subject of the cross-breeding of 
the cereals in this Journal. 
ShirrefF's crossing of wheat, and some other experiments in 
foreign countries noticed in my former article, need not be again 
referred to, and we may now at once pass to those much more 
pi'oniising experiments which are still in progress near home. 
The earliest of these undertakings was that of M. Henry L. de 
Vilmorin, to whom I am greatly indebted for the following 
account : — ■ 
The flower of wlieat, as is well laiowu, contaiEs three stamens and one 
pi^til, which latter ends in two feathery brandies. The impregnation, as a 
rule, takes place in the closed flower, hefore the stamens are pushed out. 
Indeed, when the flower slightly opens to let the stamens come out and hang 
on the side of the ear the work of fertilisation is already accomplished. 
The consequence of this is that the wheat teed is almoft invariably the ofl- 
spring of only one flower, self-fecundated, and that there is scarcely any 
reason wh}' a wheat seed should not reproduce faithfully all the character- 
istics of the parent plant, which it directly inherits as well on the male as 
on the female side. This accounts for the fact that varieties of wheat are 
generally reproduced very truly from seed. 
Again, tliere is no reason why the hand of man should not accomplish 
what nature of itself generally leaves undone — I mean the cross-fertilisation 
of wheat flowers. Few are the plants that can be more easily managed in 
this respect. Any moderately skilful hand can open the wheat flower, extract 
with fine nippers the three stamens while still in a green slate, and close the 
flower again by encircling it with some tie so as to prevent the possibility 
of foreign pollen finding its way down to the pistil. If on the next day 
pollen from another wheat flower be brought in contact with the pistil — 
which is easily eitected by opening the flower and pouring in the pollen from 
a ripe stamen — the cross-fertilisation is insured so effectually that not one 
operation out of ten proves unsuccessful. 
The object of such cross-fertilisation may be tvro-fold. First, an en- 
hanced vigour may be expected, as there is every reason to believe that the 
advantage of cross-fertilised as against self-fertilised seeds, which is the rule 
in other natural orders, should hold good in graminaceous plants. Secondly, 
the possibility may be contemplated of raising new varieties endowed with 
some special qualities which should make them particularly fitted to 
answer certain requirements cither for agricultural or milling purposes. 
Selection alone, as practised amongst the seedlings from self-fertilised 
seeds, affords a pretty sure, but generally slow, means to work any change 
that may be desired in a given variety. But while a wheat, for instance, 
is under this process made earlier or more prolific or more disease-resisting, 
its special characteristics are little, if at all, altered. Now it may be de- 
sirable, for some special purpose, to preserve some features in a plant and 
to discard some other. This is scarcely to be hoped from selection pur et 
simple, whereas this end may be attained rapidly by sowing cross-bred 
