WHEAT. 
and lofty happiness is metaphorically described 
as a “ feeding with the finest of the wheat ;” and 
a vivid declaration of the immeasurable inferiori- 
ty of human ethics to the word of God, is made in 
the figurative interrogatory, “ What is the chaff 
to the wheat?” And a number of other state- 
ments and allusions occur in the ancient inspir- 
ed writings, all showing as these do, that, in the 
very remote times when these writings were pen- 
ned, wheat had long been a regularly and ge- 
nerally cultivated crop, that it was raised and 
gathered and thrashed by the heads of families 
and leaders of the people, and that it was held in 
high or even paramount esteem as a rich and 
grateful bread-stuff. Clear monumental evidence 
exists, too, of wheat having figured from the most 
remote times as a favourite plant on the banks 
of the Nile; and grains of it, possessed of vitality, 
have been found within the cerements of some 
Thebean mummies. But the wheat of Pales- 
tine appears to have been of a much better kind 
than that of Egypt; and the wheat of some dis- 
tricts of Palestine had the reputation of being 
better than that of others. It may even be pre- 
sumed from the passage, “In the sweat of thy 
face shalt thou eat bread,” that a knowledge of 
wheat was coeval with the first man,—and from 
several passages in the later books of the sacred 
scriptures, that material improvements in se- 
lecting good varieties of it, in preparing the 
ground for it, and in managing and storing its 
crops, were effected at least one thousand years 
before the Christian era. 
The Romans of the time of the Cesars were 
well acquainted with the advantages of classify- 
ing wheats into widely different varieties, and of 
severally using these for the soils and seasons to 
which they were respectively best adapted; and 
they seem generally to have arranged them into 
two great groups under the names of triticum and 
far, and to have divided each of these into sever- 
al kinds. See the article Far. “Columella men- 
tions three kinds of triticum. The best he calls 
robus, which he says excelled the others both in 
weight and brightness; the second he calls sil- 
igo, which he says is deficient in weight; and 
the third kind, he says, is a spring wheat, of the 
nature of the siligo, and he adds that it is very 
useful to the farmer, when, by any accident, he 
is prevented from sowing in the autumn. The 
other kinds, he tells us, are not profitable, and 
are cultivated only by those who value them- 
selves upon having a great variety. Of far, 
Columella mentions three kinds likewise. The 
first he calls clusinum, which is of a bright white 
colour; the second he calls venaculum, of which 
he says there are two sorts, the one red and the 
other white; and the third is a spring wheat, 
which he calls halicastrum, and says that it ex- 
cels the others in goodness and weight. He adds, 
that it is necessary to have all these kinds both 
of triticum and far, as it seldom happens that a 
farm is so situated, that one kind is proper for 
661 
every part of it; there being, almost in every 
farm, both wet and dry lands. Almost all the 
rustic writers agree in this, that far is most pro- 
per for wet clay land, and triticum for dry land. 
‘In wet red clays,’ says Cato, ‘sow far; and in 
dry, clean, and open lands, sow triticum.’ ‘There- 
fore,’ says Varro, ‘skilful husbandmen in their 
wet lands sow far, rather than triticum.’ Colu- 
mella says, ‘that triticum thrives best on dry 
land, and that far is less hurt by wetness.’ 
Though triticum, in general, is represented as 
best adapted to dry soils, yet that kind of it 
called siligo is mentioned as proper enough for 
wet lands. Columella joins it with far, when he 
says, ‘wet and stiff clays do well enough for siligo 
and far. He observes that siligo is the whitest 
kind of the triticum, but inferior in weight,— 
that it answers very well in a wet seed time, and 
is proper for land over which water is in danger 
of running; and he adds, that it may be got 
with very little difficulty, as triticum, when sown 
upon land that lies low and wet, after the fourth 
crop, is turned into it. Pliny likewise observes 
that the siligo is proper for wet lands; and he 
mentions some soils on which it is turned into 
triticum.” 
The Botanical Characters of Wheat—The dis- 
tinctive characters of the genus triticum, in the 
old or extensive sense of it, are terminally spiked 
inflorescence,—two-valved and quite or nearly 
equal glumes,—alternate, two-rowed, many-flow- 
ered spikelets, transverse or so placed that the 
edges of the florets are towards the rachis,—and | 
two paleze surrounding the seed, the external or 
lower one either armed or pointed, and the inter- 
nal or upper one cleft at the point. The rachis 
or shaft is jointed ; the spaces between the joints 
are called the internodii; the spikelets, rising 
one above another on each side of the rachis, 
constitute the spike, or ear, or head; the glume 
or lowermost shield of each spikelet corresponds 
to the calyx of non-gramineous plants, and each 
of the florets to a corolla; some certain florets in 
each species, in general, are fertile, while others 
are barren; and the aggregate inflorescence of 
the several species differs very widely in the 
length and form of the rachis, the size and shape 
and packing of the spike, the comparative length 
of the glumes, and the number and fertility of 
the florets, and, above all, in the various proper- 
ties of the seeds. 
The distinctive characters of many of the spe- 
cies are sufficiently obvious and invariable to 
serve the purposes of the most stringent classi- 
fication ; but those of some others, particularly 
of such as are very extensively cultivated and as 
run much into varieties, either shade so greatly off 
through these varieties, or are so liable to change 
under the influences of climate and soil and time 
of sowing as to. render thé drawing of any pre- 
cise line of demarcation between different species 
in some cases exceedingly difficult, and in one or 
two quite impossible. ‘Some wheats of an ap- 
