18 The Colorado Experiment Station 
“That the white spots are not due to crossing, nor are they matters 
of heredity, but this peculiar mottling is due to the action of moisture, 
air and sun upon the grain while it is still in the chaff.” 
Prof. Bolley himself practically repudiates the conclusion 
here stated, especially in regard to the direct cause of the affection, 
in North Dakota Bulletin 107, and again in a lecture given before 
the agricultural students of the University of Wisconsin and pub¬ 
lished in Science, July, 1913. Prof. Bolley in discussing the deterio¬ 
ration of wheat makes the following statements bearing upon the 
causes of it: 
“All complain of much straw and light grain, yet find, when the 
yield is reasonably high in bushels, the grade is off whether it is well 
harvested or not. This does not, as one might suspect, indicate lack of 
nitrates in soil, but rather the contrary, for this immature shrivelled 
grain is apt to have comparatively high proteid content, its deficiency 
being chiefly the starch products. Grains are often found to be off-color, 
‘pie-bald,’ ‘blighted,’ ‘black-pointed,’ also showing pink, brown and other 
colorations of berries even though there has been no moisture at harvest 
time. These peculiar, shrivelled and discolored grains we find to be in¬ 
ternally attacked by fungi. The color is either due to the presence of 
fungi or to changes caused by them.” 
Again he says: 
“Each of the various types of injured grains as pink colored, ‘black- 
pointed,’ ‘white-bellied,’ etc., breed true, reproduce themselves.” 
It is evident from these passages and others given, that Prof. 
Bolley now holds the “pie-bald”, “yellow or white bellied”, con¬ 
dition to be due to the action of fungi. He puts these yellow- 
berries in the same class with black-pointed berries, with pink or 
brown colored berries, and assumes that they all have the same 
cause, namely fungi. Concerning the black-pointed berries he is 
certainly correct and also in regard to the pink and brown berries 
alluded to, but he includes the spotted and yellow-berries with 
these, which is wrong. This presents the subject as treated of in 
our American literature so far as the stations are concerned. The 
United States Department of Agriculture has given a full state¬ 
ment, a fair reproduction, of Kansas Bulletin 136 in one of its 
accounts of station work. This is a matter of the distribution of 
the results of station work, so I have not mentioned it. 
As I have before intimated, I ami not sure but that all of the 
work of the California Station on the white wheats do not deal 
with yellow-berry, but Dr. Shaw and his collaborators have confined 
themselves to a study of the wheats as they grow and not to the 
question of why they are mealy or starchy. 
I have some samples of Idaho wheats which are very white 
and starchy, in fact, I can see no distinction between the physical 
