TRITICUM. 
| 1. Triticum aestivum, ©r spring-wheat, has 
bur flowers in a calyx, three of which mostly 
bear grain. The calyces stand pretty dis- 
tant from each other, on both sides a flat 
smooth receptacle. The leaves of the calyx 
lire keel-shaped, smooth, and they terminate 
Ivith a short arista. The glumes of tiie 
powers are smooth and bellying, and the 
jlouter leaf of three of the glumes in every 
calyx is terminated by a long arista, but the 
three inner ones are beardless. The grain is 
rather longer and thinner than the common 
wheat. It is supposed to be a native of some 
part of Tartary. The farmers call it spring- 
wheat, because it will come to the sickle with 
the common wheat, though it should be sown 
in February or March. The varieties of it 
are : triticum aestivum spica et grana rubente. 
Spring wheat, with a red spike and grain. 
Triticum atstivum rubrum, spica alba. Red 
spring wheat, with a white spike. Triticum 
aestivum, spica et grana alba. Spring wheat, 
with a white spike and grain. 
2 . Triticum hybernum, winter or common 
wheat, has also four flowers in a calyx, three 
of which are mostly productive. The calyces 
•-.tand on each side' a smooth flat receptacle, 
as in the former species, but they are not 
quite so far asunder. The leaves of the 
calyx are bellying, and so smooth that they 
appear as if polished, but they have no arista. 
The glumes of the flowers too are smooth, 
and the outer ones, near the top of the spike, 
are often tipped with short aristae. The grain 
is rather plumper than the former, and is the 
sort most generally sown in England; whence 
the name of common wheat. Its varieties 
are: triticum hybernum, spica et grana ru- 
bente. Common wheat, with a red spike and 
grain. Triticum hybernum rubrum, spica 
*ilba. Common red wheat, with a white spike. 
Triticum hybernum, spica et grana alba. 
| Common -wheat, with a white spike and 
grain. 
3. Triticum turgidum, thick-spiked or cone- 
{ wheat. It is easily distinguished from either 
of the former: for' though it has four flowers 
in a calyx, after the manner of them, yet the 
whole calyx and the edges of the glisues are 
covered with soft hairs. The calyces too 
stand thicker on the receptacle, and make the 
'spike appear more turgid. Some of the 
outer glumes near the top ot the spike are 
terminated by short arista?, like those ot the 
1 common wheat, t he grain is shorter, plump- 
er, and more convex on the back than either 
of the former species. Its varieties are nu- 
merous, and have various appellations in dif- 
ferent counties, owing to the great affinity of 
several of them. Those most easily to be 
distinguished are: triticum turgidum coni- 
cum album. White cone wheat. Triticum 
turgidum conicum rubrum. Red cone wheat. 
(Triticum turgidum aristiferum. Bearded cone 
{wheat. Triticum turgidum spica multiplici. 
Cone wheat, with many ears. The third va- 
riety is what the farmers call clog wheat, 
square wheat, and rivets. The grain of this 
is remarkably convex on one side, and when 
ripe the awns generally break in pieces and 
fall off. This sort is very productive, but it 
yields an inferior flour to that of the former 
two species. 
4. Triticum Polonicum, or Polish wheat, 
has some resemblance to the turgidum, but 
both grain and spike are longer. The calyx 
kontams only two flowers, and the glumes are 
furnished with very long aristae ; the teeth of 
the midrib are bearded. As this sort is sel- 
dom sown in England, there is no telling what 
varieties it produces. 
5 . Triticum spelta, spelt or German wheat. 
At first view this has a great resemblance to 
barley, but it has no involucrum. The calyx 
is truncated ; that is, it appears as if the ends 
were snipped off, and it contains four flowers, 
two of which are hermaphrodite, and the 
glumes bearded, but the intermediate ones 
are neuter. There are two rows of grain as 
in barley', but they are shaped like wheat. It 
is much cultivated in France, Germany, and 
Italy. 
6. Triticum monococcum, St. Peter’s corn, 
or one-grained wheat, has three flowers in 
each calyx alternately bearded, and the mid- 
dle one neuter. The spike is shining, and has 
two rows of grain in the manner of barley. 
Where it grows naturally is not known, but 
it is cultivated in Germany; and in con- 
junction with spelt wheat is there made into 
bread, which is coarse, and not so nourishing 
as that made of common wheat. Malt made 
of any of our wheats is often put into beer, 
and a small quantity of it wiil give a large 
brewing a fine brown transparent tincture. 
Of the perennial kinds, or wheat grasses, 
the repens, or couch grass is unfortunarely 
.too well known to the gardener and husband- 
man ; the others are of little note. 
The respectable president of the Royal 
Society, whose attention is constantly directed 
to those branches of knowledge which are 
most practically useful, has published some 
remarks on the blight in corn in the y r ear 1 805 ; 
and we feel ourselves discharging a duty 
in making them as generally known as our 
circulation extends. 
He begins by observing that the blight in 
corn is occasioned by the growth of a minute 
parasitic fungus or mushroom on the leaves, 
stems, and glumes of the living plant. Felice 
Fontana published, in the year 1767, an ela- 
borate account of this mischievous weed, with 
microscopic figures, which give a tolerable 
idea of Its form ; more modern botanists have 
given figures both of corn and of grass affect- 
ed by it, but haye not used high magnifying 
powers in their researches. 
He adds, “ agriculturists do not appear to 
have paid, on this head, sufficient attention 
to the discoveries of their fellow-labourers in 
the field of nature ; for though scarcely any 
English writer of note on the subject, of rural 
economy, has failed to state his opinion of the 
origin of this evil, no one of them has yet at- 
tributed it to the real cause, unless Mr. Kir- 
by’s excellent papers on some diseases' of 
corn, published in the Transactions of the 
Linnaean Society, are considered as agricul- 
tural essays. 
It is necessary to premise, that the striped 
appearance of the surface of a straw which 
may be seen with a common magnifying 
glass, is caused by alternate longitudinal 
partitions of the bark, the one imperforate, 
and the' other furnished with one or two rows 
of pores or mouths, shut in dry, open in wet 
weather, and well calculated to imbibe fluid 
whenever the straw is damp. 
By these pores, which exist also on the 
leaves and glumes, it is presumed that the 
seeds of the fungus gain admission, and at 
the bottom of the hollows to which they lead, 
5 M 2 
(see Plate II. fig. 1,2), they germinate and 
push their minute roots, no doubt (though 
these have not yet been traced) into the cel- 
lular texture beyond the bark, where they 
draw their nourishment, by intercepting (he 
sap that was intended by nature for the nu- 
triment of the grain; the corn of course be- 
comes shrivelled iu proportion as the fungi 
are more or less numerous on the plant ; and. 
as the kernel only is abstracted bom the 
grain, while the cortical part remains undi- 
minished, the propo tion ot Hour or bran in 
blighted corn, is always reduced in the same 
degree as the corn is made light. Some com 
of this year’s crop will not yield a stone of 
flour from a sack of wheat; and it is not im- 
possible that in some cases the corn has been 
so completely robbed of its flour by the fun- 
gus, that if the proprietor should choose to 
incur the expence ot threshing and grinding 
it, bran would be the produce, with scarcely 
an atom of flour for each grain. 
Every species of corn, properly so called, 
is subject to the blight ; but it is dbservabie 
that spring corn is less damaged by it than 
winter, and rye less than wheat, probably be- 
cause it is ripe and cut down before the fun- 
gus has had time to increase in any large de- 
gree. Tull says that “ white cone, or beard- 
ed wheat, which hath its straw like a rush lull 
of pith, is less subject to blight than Lammas 
wheat, which ripens a week later.” 
The spring wheat of Lincolnshire was 
not in the least shrivelled this year, though 
the straw was in some degree affected : the 
millers allowed that it was the best sample 
brought to market. Barley was in some 
places considerably spotted, but as the whole 
of the stem of that grain is naturally envelop- 
ed in the hose or basis of the leaf, the fungus 
can in no case gain admittance to the straw 7 ; 
it is, however, to be observed that barley 
rises from the flail lighter this year than was 
expected from the appearance of the crop 
when gathered in. 
It seems probable that the leaf is first in- 
fected in the spring or early in the summer, 
before the corn shoots up into straw, and that 
1 the fungus is then of an orange colour ; after 
the straw 7 has become yellow 7 , the fungus as- 
sumes a deep chocolate brown : each indi- 
vidual is so small that every pore on a straw 
will produce from 20 to 40 fungi, as may be 
seen in the plates, and every one of these 
will no doubt produce at least 100 seeds; if 
then one of these seeds tillows out into the 
number of plants that appear at the bottom 
of a pore In Plate II. iig. 1, 2, how incal- 
culably large must the increase be ! A few 
diseased plants scattered over a field must 
very speedily infect a whole neighbourhood, 
for the seeds of fungi are not much heavier 
than air, as every one who has trod upon a 
ripe puff-ball must have observed by seeing 
the dust, among which is its seed, rise up and 
float on before him. 
How long it is before this fungus arrives 
at puberty, and scatters its seeds in the w ind, 
can only be guessed at by the analogy of 
others ; probably the period of a generation 
is short, possibly not more than a week ir j. 
hot season : if so, how frequently in the 1 tier 
end of the summer must the air be loaded 
with this animated dust, ready, whenever a 
gentle breeze, accompanied with humidify, 
shall give the signal to intrude itsell into the 
