82 
Ilorse-hreedinri for Profit. 
80L (from an idle mare). In the case of a four-year-old colt out 
of a genei’al utility mare it would be 40L” 
Mr. Andrew Brown says, “ It costs 40L to rear a four-year-old 
colt, and if a farmer got that price for good and bad, it would 
pay him better than rearing cattle.” 
Ill conclusion, I would say that could the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer augment, by another 5,000/., the 5,000Z. a year 
already at the disposal of the Royal Commission on Horse 
Breeding, and could the Commissioners allocate some portion of 
this money to the encouragement of sound agricultural and other 
than Thoroughbred sires, I believe that the impetus already 
given during the last few years by Queen’s Premiums to horse- 
breeding would be so much greater as to astonish us all in its 
results. And further, if Mr. Chaplin could be induced to initiate 
a system of Government certificates for stallions that would give 
the ordinary breeder protection against unsound sires, I believe 
an incalculable amount of good would result. 
A. E. Pease. 
THE LIFE OF THE WHEAT PLANT 
■ FROM SEED TO SEED. 
As the Royal Agricultural Society has decided to publish a series 
of eight coloured diagrams of the wheat plant, it has been thought 
that it might be advantageous to give in the pages of the Journal, 
for general infoi’mation, a description of the life of the wheat plant 
from seed to seed. No more careful study nor faithful representa- 
tions of wheat have ever been made than those of Francis Bauer, 
and the diagrams in question (which are given in miniature on 
pages 92 to 99), are reproductions of his original drawings, now 
in the Botanical Department of the British Museum. 
I. The Stkucture of the Grain. 
(The figures printed in the margin refer to the corresponding figures on page 92.) 
The seed of a plant resembles the egg of a fowl. Each contains 
a living germ with a supply of food, surrounded by a protective 
covering. Under suitable conditions the living germ starts into 
active life, and finds in the store of food sufficient to meet its 
early need and carry it on until it can obtain food for itself — 
that is, in the one case, until the roots of the plant have got pos- 
session of the soil and the leaves are spread into the air, and in 
the other until the chicken is sufficiently grown that, having 
escaped from its shelly covering, it can seek food for itself. 
