34 
Colorado Experiment Station 
“These facts, which are of universal application, enable us to explain 
some of the causes which tend to the production of good or bad crops of 
wheat.” 
In discussing the good crops of 1858 and 1863, they go further in 
discussing the general composition of the^ grain than in the preceding 
quotations and give us another view of how the weather affects this. 
In the preceding quotations they speak of good and bad crops without 
special consideration of the composition of the grain, but in the fol¬ 
lowing quotations they include the latter: *‘It will afterward be seen, 
indeed, that the total crop of 1863 contained about one and one-half time 
as much mineral matter per acre, and also considerably more nitrogen than 
that of either of the other seasons ( 1852 , 1856 , 1858 ): yet the percentage 
of both was much lower in the grain, and that of the nitrogen lower also 
in the straw, than in the produce in either of the other years. There is 
here again evidence that with favorable maturation there is low percentage 
of both mineral matter and nitrogen; that is, favorable maturation means 
the greater accumulation of non-nitrogenous organic substances^ carbohy¬ 
drates and especially starch,—the result necessarily being a lowering of the 
proportion though not of the actual amount of both the nitrogenous and 
mineral constituents.” These authors havei been quoted already as at¬ 
tributing the defect of their climate, in regard to the wheat crop, to an 
excess of rain rather than to a deficiency in the mean temperature. 
They attribute the effects of excessive moisture to two principal facts, 
first, to the'preference of the plant itself for a dry rather than a wet 
soil, and second, to the leaching out of the nitrates. 
Lawes and Gilbert, it appears, have written exclusively of winter- 
wheat which, in England, seems to have a very long growing period, as 
they speak of August as their harvest period. They make no distinc¬ 
tion between flinty and mealy kernels, as the German writers do. I am 
unfortunately not familiar with the English wheats and have seen 
but few samples of European wheats, but the Swedish, Dutch and 
French wheats that I have seen were mealy wheats and that to such 
an extent that one could! not distinguish the kernels' as having distinct 
characteristics, as flinty and mealy. This may be the case with the 
English wheats, but one would scarcely think that it would be the case 
with all of their samples, which were grown with such a variety of 
manuring. Still, they use the weight per bushel as indicative of quality; 
the only exception to this statement is in the quotation just made defin¬ 
ing favorable maturation, “That is, favorable maturation means the 
greater accumulation of non-nitrogenous organic substances,—carbohydrates 
and especially starch,—the result necessarily being a lowering of the pro¬ 
portion, though not of the actual amount of both the nitrogenous and the 
mineral constituents.” Even in this statement it is not clear that their 
statement can be construed as distinguishing between flinty and mealy 
