On the St. Johns-Day Rye. 
351 
impossible. More intimate researches into the wonders of nature 
abnost daily prove that accounts of physical facts detailed by old 
writers and travellers, which the incredulity of our forefathers and 
our own sciolism had proscribed as false and impossible, are well 
supported by the truth ; therefore the author will not venture to 
say that the transformation of oats to rye, or of rye to droke or lop, 
is impossible ; but he will say, that no appearance which he has 
seen, during more than threescore years of not incurious attention 
to physical objects, does in the least degree induce him to believe 
that such a transformation ever has taken or ever will take place. 
On the other hand, he will state facts which are very likely to 
mislead an inattentive observer into this belief, and to generate 
an erroneous opinion that such a change or degeneracy does take 
place. The seed of Bromus mollis drops to the ground before 
rye is ripe, and grows freely. The seed of the St. John's rye is, 
for the most part, not larger than the seeds of droke (Lolium 
temulentum, and L. arvense, and of Bromus secalinus, — smooth 
rye-brome-grass) ; and no sieve which the author has ever 
been able to obtain will separate the bulk of the rye from these 
two seeds. The author has recently discovered that a very 
strong wind, applied through a good winnovving-machine, like 
Mr. Ground's, will separate a mass consisting of the tailing rye, 
droke, and lop together, from the head-rye ; but this is the 
nearest advance he has made towards cleaning the seed, if ever 
it comes foul from the flail. Droke is the enemy most to be 
dreaded in strong soils, and the brome-grasses in light soils. 
Both of them increase in a much greater ratio than the rye. 
For example, taking a certain number of plants of droke, the 
author finds nine ears thereon, each ear containing 66 seeds, 
together about 600 seeds. He has found that the like number 
of plants of Bromus secalinus, grown among the St. John's rye, 
have brought to maturity 39 ears, together containing 2873 
seeds ; while from the like number of plants of St. John's-day 
rye the produce was 1 1 ears, containing 465 grains only ; — 
so that, judging by this specimen, the droke may be taken to 
increase faster than the rye, nearly in the ratio of four to three, 
and the Bromus secalinus to increase faster than the' rye, in the 
ratio nearly of six to one. If, therefore, in the seed first sown 
there were one seed of droke among twenty seeds of r} e, and the 
entire produce were re-sown without getting the droke out of it, 
year after year, then, in the seed to be sown in the eleventh year the 
quantity of droke would exceed the quantity of rye by more than 
twenty per cent. ; and if the Bromus secalinus were in the first 
sowing to bear the proportion of one seed of Brome to twenty of 
rye, and the whole produce were to be sown together without get- 
ting out any of the brome-seed, year after year, then, In the third 
year the brome would be nearly double of the rye, and in the fourtli 
