sort in February or March. The flour of the 
spelt wheats contains more gluten than that of 
the common sorts; it makes a superior very 
white bread, and is much used by confectioners 
for pastry.” 
The one-grained wheat, Zrzticum monococcum, 
is allied to the spelts, and is cultivated, on poor 
soils, in the mountainous parts of Continental 
Kurope; and it was introduced to Britain so 
long ago as about the middle of the seventeenth 
century. Its straw and leaves are very small 
and rigid; its ears are small, very much com- 
pressed, and two-rowed in a manner similar to 
common barley; its spikelets are close, imbri- 
cated, and about as long as four joints of the 
rachis; each spikelet contains only two florets, 
the one fertile and long-awned, the other barren 
and short-awned; and the grain is small, trian- 
gular, transparent, soft,and mealy. The flour 
of this wheat makes a good dark-coloured bread, 
but is more particularly adapted for gruel. “The 
one-grained wheat,” says Mr. Lawson, “is equally 
hardy with the spelt wheat, but far inferior to it 
in quacity and produce; however, it thrives on 
the poorest, dry, calcareous, sandy soils where 
few other of the cereal grains would subsist, and 
yields straw, which, although short, is, from its 
firmness and durability, well adapted for thatch- 
ing; for which the straw of the spelt-like wheats 
in general seems much better adapted than for 
fodder.” 
Comparative Trials of Different Wheats.——Pecu- 
liar kinds of wheat suitable for particular soils, 
particular situations, particular times of sowing, 
and particular purposes, are so comparatively few 
in number and so comparatively marked in cha- 
racter as to occasion little difficulty of selection, 
and sometimes not even to allow any alternative 
for choice; while kinds which possess only in- 
distinct peculiarities, and are suitable for ordi- 
nary soils, ordinary situations, ordinary times of 
sowing, and the most ordinary purposes of cul- 
ture, are so aggregately multitudinous and so 
individually ill-defined, as often or even usually 
to render it exceedingly difficult, on any one farm 
or in any one district, to select such as may prove 
most profitable. Thus, if an inexperienced farm- 
er wish to ascertain the most suitable wheat for 
an excessively stiff soil, or for a poor soil, or for 
a cold or elevated situation, or for sowing at the 
latest possible period in spring, or for the best 
thatching adaptations of the straw, or for the 
most glutinous qualities of the grain, he may 
readily discover it, and will be liable to scarcely 
any hesitation or mistake in doing so, simply by 
perusing the brief accounts of the principal kinds 
in our six preceding sections; but if, on the other 
hand, he wish to ascertain the kind which will 
best compensate him by ordinary routine culti- 
vation on any kind of good low-lying farm of the 
mixed husbandry, whether the soil be clay or 
loam, whether the time of sowing be autumn or 
spring, and whether the main consideration be | 
WHEAT. 
677 
the grain alone or both the straw and the grain, 
he may at first feel rather hindered than helped 
by the accounts which we have given, and may 
in a little while feel himself more confounded 
than instructed by the display of many kinds, 
all seeming to compete with one another for supe- 
riority,—and, if he seek relief from his perplexity 
by an appeal to the opinions or usages of his 
neighbours, he will, in almost every case, be either 
thrust deeper into difficulty or driven back on 
the guidance of mere empiricism or chance. 
Though numerous varieties of prime or very good 
wheats seem to be very nearly equal in value, 
and though all have necessarily been described 
by us under determinate characters which were 
severally assigned to them under circumstances 
of apparently normal development, yet all differ 
more or less widely from one another in such 
constitutional habits and minute adaptations as 
most materially affect their comparative value on 
any one farm, and each differs more or less widely 
from itself in the younger or older stages of its 
existence as a variety and in the greater or less 
congeniality of the circumstances of its culture. 
Hence, a variety which is of prime-rate profita- 
bleness under one set of circumstances of climate, 
soil, manure, rotation, sowing, and tillage, may 
be only second-rate or fifth-rate or tenth-rate 
profitable under a different set of these circum- 
stances; and a variety which was eminently pro- 
ductive in any given circumstances when it was 
young, may become very inferiorly productive in 
exactly the same circumstances when it turns old. 
Every extensive cultivator of ordinary market 
wheat, therefore, ought to find out for himself 
the varieties which best suit the conditions of his 
own farm and farming; and this he will do either 
by ascertaining the result of comparative experi- 
ments conducted by some intelligent neighbour 
under precisely similar conditions, or by insti- 
tuting a set of such experiments himself. The 
latter is the more satisfactory method; and may 
easily be done simply by selecting all the seem- 
ingly prime kinds which promise to be suitable 
for the soil and culture, and by planting equal 
surfaces of ground with each at such depths and 
distances as will afford all the fullest play for 
their utmost possible luxuriance. As examples 
of the kind of way in which experiments should 
be conducted, and of the nicety and diversity of 
the results which may be ascertained, we shall 
here insert reports of two admirable experiments 
by respectively Mr. John Morton and W. Miles, 
Ksq., M. P. 
‘¢ The intelligent farmer of arable land,” says Mr. 
Morton, ‘‘ expects a greater crop, the more he has 
been able to improve the texture of the soil, and 
the better the nature and state of the manure which 
it contains, He expects it, because he knows that 
it depends on the nature of the food given to the 
plants, and the manner in which they are provided 
with a constant supply of it. The crop does not, 
however, depend only on this; for as two beasts fed 
in exactly the same manner may not be equally pro- 
