COEN. 
11 
in which, of course, it is a great pest, if only from the circum- 
stance of its encumbering the ground, and so preventing the 
growth of the required crop. 
About ten years since we collected some of the seeds of this 
weed (see engTaving, fig. 1), and in the following spring com- 
menced its cultivation in our experimental plots at the Royal 
Agricultural College ; and so, year by year, we saved seeds ; and 
in 1855 we were enabled to report the following changes : — 
1st. A lighter-coloured fruit. 
2nd. A less degree of hairiness, when compared with the fruits 
of the true Avenci fatua. 
3rd. A greenish-coloured, straight, and slight awn,* in place 
of the black rigid one, bent at right angles, and twisted at the 
lower part, which characterizes the wild plant. 
4th. The fruits were much more plump, arising from a 
greater development of gram, than in the truly wild state. 
5th. The ripe fruit separated from the floral envelope less 
readily than in A. fatua. 
In 1856, seed with the characters just described was sown in 
a prepared bed, and the result was a large admixture of two 
forms or types of crop oats, one with the flowers all round the 
stem — the “ potato oat” form of the farmers ; and the other 
with the flowers all drooping to one side — “the so-called Tarta- 
rean oat.” (See engraving, fig. 2.) Since then we have grown 
these sorts so derived, in the field, and with a gradual improve- 
ment in point of productiveness and weight per bushel, an item 
which no horse-keeper will fail to appreciate. 
These experiments, then, have been of great interest, not only 
as proving that a cereal grass is derived from a wild or meadow 
grass ; but that the remarks of old farmers, who, in some situa- 
tions, objected to grow oats as a crop, “because they degenerated 
into the wild weed-oat,” are founded on fact ; and it is a cwdous 
and interesting example of experience forestalling science. This 
matter is further of great interest to the vegetable physiologist, 
as now we have, by experiment, obtained cultivated oats from 
wild ones ; and since then we have watched the production of 
loild oats as a gradual degeneration from cultivated ones. 
Wheat. — If one vegetable production more than another has 
come to be considered a direct gift to man, handed down to him 
in an unaltered state from the most remote periods, it is wheat ; 
yet, when we consider the enormous number of varieties of this 
plant found in different parts of the world, and remember, too, 
that new sorts are introduced almost every year, we cannot help 
being struck with the capabilities of wheat to assume a varia- 
tion, not only in external form, but also in differences in quality, 
* The beard or bristle. 
