114 
CULTURE OF WHEAT WITHIN THE TROPICS. 
such seed sown and reaped in England : the tillering in both cases being alike ; 
and although the return, as stated in the last notice, falls considerably short of 
what Mr. Storr’s sanguine expectations led him to anticipate, it has been such 
as to gratify the most extravagant desires, and more than bear Humboldt 
out in his statement, that “ it is an error that generally prevails under the 
Tropics to consider grain as plants which degenerate in advancing towards the 
Equator, and to believe that the harvests are more abundant in the Northern 
climates/' In New-Providence, within 25 degrees of the line, we find, in the 
governor’s garden, sixty-two ears produced by six grains; and, taking the produce 
at sixty-five grains to each ear, the average given by Mr. Storr’s latest notice, 
we shall have a total return of four thousand and thirty grains from six , or 
671.675 for one —a return far exceeding even that obtained in the fertile vallies 
of Aragua, where, as Humboldt informs us, in February, 1800, “ a harvest of 
twenty for one was expected: and, as if the produce were but moderate, I was 
asked whether corn produced more in Prussia and Poland V 
This falls far short, however, of the average of the return obtained by Mr. 
Storr, who found each grain to yield from fifty to sixty ears, each containing 
from sixty to seventy grains. These results give an average of fifty-five ears from 
each grain, and sixty-five grains to each ear; being an average return of no less 
than trehe thousand five hundred and seventy-five for one . 
“With respect to the climate, soil, and elevation of the spot on which these 
experiments were made, Mr. Lees, in a letter from Nassau, New-Providence, of 
the date of the 8th of August, 1836, furnishes the following valuable information: 
' c< The average height of the thermometer is, in the Summer months, say from 
May to October, about 87°, scarcely varying two or three degrees either way: it 
may be two degrees lower at night: and we have no high land at all here : where 
the Wheat is grown is not more than four feet above the sea level. The soil is of 
three kinds. A red soil composed of decayed wood and other vegetable matter, 
which at first is exceeding fertile, and is the best land for Pine-apples ; but, when 
exposed, is very soon exhausted; and, indeed, in dry weather is so very fine and 
light that it soon entirely blows away, leaving the bare rock, which is every 
where in these islands from six inches to two feet under the stratum of soil. There 
is a black vegetable mould of the above nature, but not so fertile ; and there is a 
soil (by far the most abundant) composed of pulverized Madrepore rock and 
minute fragment of sea shells , interspersed with either or with both of the above 
•vegetable moulds: this of course may be much improved by adding animal 
manure to it. It was in the latter, so improved with animal manure , that the 
Wheat* I now send was grown. The sea sand consists entirely of pulverized 
* Nineteen grains of this Wheat, which yet remain in my possession, weighed on trial ten troy 
rains; being at the rate of 144 grains to the troy drachm. 
