6 BULLETIN 357, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
eral it tells that when the coffin of an Egyptian mummy 3,000 or 
4.000 years old was opened, some wheat was found. Seed was 
planted, but only a single kernel grew. The resulting plant proved 
a wonderful yielder and very different from any wheat now known. 
Of course, this story in all its forms is a fabrication, pure and 
simple. Stored under most favorable conditions, seeds of wheat will 
not keep their vitality more than a few years. No wheat thousands 
of years old has ever been known to germinate. 
The name Egyptian wheat has recently been used in exploit- 
ing a very different crop, namely, a variety of sorghum properly 
known as shallu. 1 The name Miracle has been recently used for an 
entirely different kind of wheat. The name Wild Goose has been 
used also for Arnautka durum wheat and for Polish wheat. 
It always has seemed easy to interest people in this wheat. The 
branched head and the mumn^, wild-goose, and other stories have 
been the very profitable stock in trade of many a promoter. It seems 
very natural to many people that if an unbranched head will yield 
so much, a branched head should yield much more. Head for head, 
this may sometimes be true, but acre for acre it is not, as shown by 
the results of experiment. The wheat is not grown commercially 
anywhere in this country, and ought not to be until it is shown to 
possess better qualities than are known at present. 
RECENT EXPLOITATION OF ALASKA WHEAT. 
In the early summer of 1908 accounts of what was claimed to be a 
wonderful new wheat appeared in the press. These set forth in brief 
that in 1904 an Idaho farmer had found, in a secluded spot on the 
Alaskan coast, a wheat plant with branched heads. They further 
stated he had brought back one head and sowed its seed that fall, 
increasing the quantity to 7 pounds in 1905 and to 1,545 pounds in 
1906, the latter being an increase of 220 fold, from which it was 
argued that sowing 1 bushel to the acre would produce 220 bushels. 
One of the statements about the wheat which awakened much in- 
terest in the Eastern States was al follows : 2 
And, last and best of all, it will bring back wheat raising to the worn-out 
farms of the East, where, with wheat yields 200 bushels to the acre, farmers 
can afford to use manures and chemicals and make a profit. 
There was obtained soon after a well-illustrated advertising cir- 
cular containing exaggerated and misleading statements regarding 
the origin of the wheat, its yielding power, its milling value, its 
drought and cold resistance, its adaptabilit}^ to poor soils, etc. This 
1 Ball, C. R. Three much-misrepresented sorghums. U. S. Dept. Agr., Bur. Plant Indus. 
Cir. 50, 14 p., 2 fig. 1910. 
2 Day, O. F. G.' A miracle in wheat. In Sat. Even. Post, v. 181, no. 7, p. 11. 1908. 
The assertions made in this article were later disavowed by the paper. (Editorial, Sat. 
Even. Post, v. 181, no. 11, p. 16. 1908.) 
