On iJte Conditions of Wheat-G-rowing in India. 
37 
that may be grown as au early liharif cvo]}. Were there no other 
points of attraction this alone is well worthy of being followed up 
and put to a final test. It is much to be deprecated that, while 
volumes have been written upon every side issue of the wheat 
trade, no scientific investigation has been instituted into the 
subject of the varieties of wheat grown in India. Such an inquiry 
would doubtless lead to decided advances towards establishing 
the reasons for their peculiar adaptabilities. With such a 
knowledge, it would not be necessary to grope so much in the 
dark in the matter of efforts to introduce better varieties from 
one part of India to another, AVe have not, however, at present 
the means at our disposal to verify the suggestion contained in 
the above explanation of the liJiajile fovm of Bombay wheat, and 
as our readers may not have access to the numerous records in 
which brief passages occur regarding it, we may extract one or 
two more passages. 
In the "Abmednagar Gazetteer "it is stated : " KhapU, also called J, is 
very hardy ; but requires pounding to separate the husk." In Kolhapur it is 
said, " Khaple is largely grown in watered lands as a crop alternately with 
sugar-cane. The grain is coated with an adhering husk, which cannot be 
separated without pounding." 
We venture to think that the announcement that spelt- 
wheat is one of the forms of that cereal regularly and exten- 
sively grown in India, while perhaps not of commercial im- 
portance, will be, nevertheless, received with no small degree of 
interest. 
There is something altogether peculiar and exceptional in the 
wheats of Bombay. Their hardness and redness may to some extent 
be due to soil, and the presence, for example, of iron may have a 
good deal to say to this ; but there are special forms readily 
cultivated by methods and under conditions that would be utterly 
fruitless with any known form of Panjab wheat. Indeed, it is 
difficult to understand why Panjab and Sind wheats have not 
been introduced into large tracts of the northern section of 
Bombay, and the wheats of the Central Provinces into the 
southern. These wheats would be vast improvements on the 
wheats generally produced in Bombay. 
Experiments with English pedigree wheats have been made, 
but apparently attended with much less success than we find 
recorded in 18G6 in connection with the district of Saugor in 
the Central Provinces. At the same time we read of efforts 
having been made to furnish the cultivator with carefully hand- 
picked soft white and soft red wheats, and of the effort to, in 
this way, improve the stock having been abandoned as fruitless. 
It is hardly possible to escape from the conclusion that the more 
rational course would be to carefully investigate the botanical 
