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sufficiently productive to satisfy tlieir necessities. Nature is kind where 
little is asked, but will not without encouragement repay a magnificent 
usury. 
To the culture of wheat, high care, and the organized means devo¬ 
ted by intelligent calculation to all pursuits of industry, are requisite. 
A realization of the utmost possible profit with least expense is the 
great problem of civilized society. It is the leading and ultimate object 
in all schemes of labor and business, and to its accomplishment the ap¬ 
plication of means which science has demonstrated the best and cheapest, 
is necessary. The wheat plant is one that rapidly exhausts the sources 
of nourishment in the soil, which art must again supply. Seed-time and 
harvest must be determined by careful observation of climate, of fluctu¬ 
ations in the atmosphere, of the mildness and severity of seasons. The 
seed in the earth, the grain in the shock, the stack or the granary, equally 
require skill and experience to preserve them from injury. 
Wheat in its various forms is the staple article of food in civilized 
countries. It forms a necessary, and enters into the luxuries of life. It 
is bread, it is cake, it is pastry. It supplies the necessities of the poor, 
it ministers to the tastes of the rich. The coarser grains satisfy the 
coarser appetites of barbarianism. This is adapted to the cultivated wants, 
and is a refined comfort, of civilization. Wheat is the finest and richest 
grain that grows. It affords more and better nutriment to the same bulk 
than any other grain. It is the most costly and best repays the labor of 
cultivation. In short, like the other comforts and discoveries of civiliza¬ 
tion, like the fine cloths and intricate machinery, which are the products 
and means of enlightened science, it marks the eras of advancement—it 
is almost a token of the progress of mankind. It would not, perhaps, 
be a wild figure of speech to say that the history of the wheat plant, its 
culture and use, would be the history of civilization. 
There are but few plants, even the most important, the history of 
which can be traced with accuracy beyond a few centuries backward. Of 
the wheat plant, the earliest accounts mention its production in the island 
of Sicily, and afterwards in the countries included within the narrow 
belt of civilization along the northern shores of the Mediterranean, in 
Asia Minor, and in Egypt. As communities advanced, it was cultivated 
to a greater extent, and with greater success. It spread with the spread 
