Wheat

WHEAT. Tritteum vulgare. Wheat has in all ages of the world been the chief reliance among nations for bread. Those countries export ing bread grains even to-day relying upon it as a great money crop. This is due to two reasons, it carries well, and its large and uniform price enables it to be sent longer distances than any other bread grain except rice, the latter only serving as food to the partially civilized nations of warm climates. In plants used as food by man, we find the following interesting and con densed history of wheat, which we reproduce : Wheat (Triticum vulgare), which is the most important and widely distributed of all bread stuffs, according to the Grecian fable, was ori ginally native on the plains of Enna and in Sicily, but it is much more probable that, like barley, it was received from Central Asia, where Olivier seems to have found it growing wild on the banks of the Euphrates. In any event, it belongs to the longest cultivated cerealia. Even Theophrastes was acquainted with it; probably the grained summer variety, from which the win ter wheat seems to have been subsequently devel oped. In a similar manner, Scripture points to its cultivation in Palestine. Even in China it was known 3,000 years before Christ as a cul tivated plant. As Isis was supposed to have introduced wheat into Egypt, and Demeter into Greece, so the Emperor Chin-nong is said ta have introduced it into China. The great variety of the ancient names used for indicating this plant points to the wide circle of distribution which it originally possessed. At the present day, wheat is cultivated in all parts of the earth, having been taken to America by the Spaniards, at the beginning of the sixteenth centmy. Besides the common wheat, several other species of wheat are to be considered as cultivated plants, although they have attained a much more restricted distribution. Among these may be mentioned the Triticum turgidum, which was cultivated even by the ancient Egyptians, and was known to the Romans in Pliny's time. As it has not even yet reached India, its native land is to be looked for rather to the south and west of the Mediterranean than in Central Asia. The many-eared or Egyptian wheat (Triticum cora positum,) is only a variety. It is cultivated chiefly in southern Europe and in England. Two species of wheat, Triticum durum, and Trit icum Polonicum, or Polish wheat, areonly culti vated to advantage in the warmer regions of Europe. The Spelt (Triticum spelta), at present cultivated only in Europe, here and there, was met with even by Alexander the Great as a cul tivated plant in his campaign in Pontus. Its origin in Mesopotamia and Hamadan, in Persia, is doubtful; especially as its cultivation in these countries can not be carried back to any very remote antiquity, and it likewise seems to have been known in Egypt, even though at the present day it is not found there. The German name Spalt points to its early cultivation in Germany. We come finally to the little-cultivated, one grained wheat, (friticum monococcum), this is the Kussemeth of the Scriptures. From it the S3rrians and Arabians made their bread. Its cultivation has not extended either to India, Egypt or Greece. Both the rimea and the region of Eastern Caucasus have been indicated as the native country of the oue-eared wheat. The Emmercorn, or German wheat, (Triticum amyleum), has had an equally ancient cultivation. It is cultivated more frequently in the southern than in the middle portions of Europe. Wheat occupies a broader belt than rye, and is culti vated as the principal crop in middle and south ern France, England, (where it constitutes the chief object of culture among the cerealia), a part of Germany, Hungary, the lands of the southern Danube, the Crimea, and in the lands of the Caucasus, as well as Central Asia, wher ever the soil is cultivated; along its northern border it is associated in culture with rye, in the southern with rice and maize (Indian corn). The latter is chiefly the case in the North American States, and in the region of the Mediterranean. Wheat is even cultivated in the southern hemi shere, at the Cape, Buenos Ayres, and Chili, wherever the climatological conditions will allow. Coming to the United States we find that wheat was first sown in the United States at Cutty hunk, Buzzard's bay, in 1602, by Goswold, the first explorer of the coast. It was first sown in Virginia in 1611, in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, prior to 1626, since in that year -samples were sent back to the mother country. 'The first record of wheat in the Plymouth colo ny, is that in 1629 wheat and other seed grains were sent for to the mother country. In all new -countries capable of producing wheat it quickly :becomes the staple crop, hut quickly exhausting the soil under such indifferent cultivation as is usually given, it is soon replaced hy other crops. Within the last thirty years, the Genesee val more than twenty times as much. The figures in the first table below will explain themselves. That the wheat crop, with a smaller volume and a more active foreign demand, should make so rapid extension is less strange than the nearly equal rate of acceleration of the immense volume of our great natural crop, maize. With less than an increase of 100 per cent. in population, this crop has more than doubled. The quantity produced has actually decreased in the East, it ley in New York, East, and Virginia in the South, were the two greatest wheat raising sec tions of the United States. The report of the Commissioners of Agriculture in 1876 gives most interesting figures in relation to this hegira, the three tables of which are significant. The state ment is as follows: Another point of inquiry has been the changes in kind and volume of pro duction, caused by westward emigration, set tlements of virgin tracts of territory, deprecia tion of rate of yield by irrational modes of cul ture, and the varying measure of foreign demand for food products. The movement of popula tion westward across the continent has been one of the wonders of modern times. Not only is the volume of wheat of to-day more than three fold greater than in 1849, but the increase of that portion of it grown beyond the Mississippi is greater than the entire crop of that year. Five per cent. only was then produced west of the Mississippi; and in 1876, a year of comparative failure in the Northwest, it was forty per cent. Dividing the country into three sections, the first including the Atlantic coast States, with Penn :sylvania, and the Virginias to the Ohio river, and the second and third sections separated by the Mississippi river, we find more than half ot the wheat grown in the first in 1849, the percent ages of each section changing rapidly, as follows: The first section has now a little more than one third of its former proportion; even the second, which was swept with so heavy a wave of im migration in the first decennial period, exhibits .a declining percentage, while the third has eight times its former prominence, even in a year of low production of spring wheat, and promises to make the proportion nine to one in 1877, or forty-five per cent. A few years more will find a preponderating weight of wheat production heyond the Father of Waters. Comparing rela tive quantities rather than proportions of the .crop, we find that the tlantic coast has held its -own, and little more; the central belt produces three times as much; the trans-Miasissippi belt, has doubled in the Central States, and is seven times as large beyond the Mississippi. The pro portions of the whole crop produced by the three section,s are (nearly) as follows: The East has declined continuously and hope lessly; the center has held a determined struggle, yielding only inch by inch; the West has trod the track of destiny with accelerated step. In 1880 this Western preponderance had already been reached, the center of wheat production being a line running north and south, and touch ing the Mississippi river at St. Louis. In rela tion to varieties and to cross fertilization, selec tion and cultivation, in producing superior qual ities, and also in the adaptation of certain soils in growing superior seed wheat, the following facts must suffice: From the well-defined species ac cepted by botanists, and which may be described in general terms, as the hard wheats, the soft wheats and the Polish wheats, all the innumer able varieties known to agriculturalists have descended. The hard wheats are the product of warm climates, such as Italy, Sicily and Barbary. The soft wheats are grown in the northern parts of Europe, as in England, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. The Polish wheats grow in the country from which they derive their name, and are also hard wheats. The hard wheats contain much more,gluten than the other varieties. This valuable ingredient is a tough, viscid substance, very nutritious, and which, as it abounds in nitro gen, readily promotes fermentation in the dough, and is essential to good light bread. The quan tity of nitrogen varies with the soil and climate from five per cent. in some soft wheats to thirty per cent. in the hardest and most transparent. It is the higher proportion of gluten that exists in Italian wheats that fits them for use in the prepa ration of macaroni and the rich pastes that form so large a portion of the food of the people of that land. The softer wheats contain a larger proportion of starch. The latter are usually grown in England., and require to be well dried and hardened before they can be readily ground into flour. Many of these varieties of wheat have resulted from influences derived from the soil. Some soils are remarkable, far and wide, for producing good seed, and it is equally well known that this seed degenerates in other soils, so that the original is resorted to for fresh sup plies of seed. This is so well known in England that the produce of a certain parish in Cambridge shire is sold for seed at a price considerably above the average. It is not, however, the ex perience of all that the finest wheat makes the best seed, but in the choice of seed the nature of the soil upon which it is to be sown must be considered as well as that upon which it grew. It has been asserted that all the various noted seed wheats, when analyzed by the chemist, are found to contain the different elements of which they are composed in nearly the same proportion, especially the starch and gluten. For bread, that which contains the most gluten, is preferred; but to produce a perfect vegetation there should be no excess of this substance, and no deficiency, and the seed should have arrived at perfect maturity. Moreover, it has also been stated, and with great apparent probability of its truth, that if we wish to grow any peculiar sort of wheat, and find by our preparation of the soil or its original composition that we produce a wheat in which the gluten and starch are in different pro portions from that of the original seed, we may conclude that this is owing to more or less nitrog enous matter in the soil—that is, more animal manure—or proportionally more vegetahle hu mus; and by increasing the one or the other, we may bring our wheat to have all the properties of the original seed. By selecting seed from

those ears which appeared superior to the others in a field of ripe wheat, sowing them in a garden or in a part of the field, the variety which may have been produced by some fortuitous impreg nation, or by some peculiarity of the soil of the spot where it grew, may be perpetuated. By carefully adapting the seed to the soil, and by a careful and garden-like cultivation, and adding those manures which are found to be best adapted to favor its perfect vegetation, crops of wheat have been raised which at one time would have been thought miraculous, and in Great Britain, where only is its culture regarded as its import ance demands, and the highest skill, the result of enlightened inquiry into the requirements of this invaluable grain, been persistently applied, the average product has been greatly increased on all soils. To original defect in the soil or inadequate fertilization, we may reasonably ascribe the deterioration observed to follow cul tivation of varieties of wheat which at first appeared well adapted to the locality and the climate. The demand for new seed wheat to repair the loss arising from continued decline in the product from year to year, should induce cultivators to seek for a cause for this deteriora tion, either in the condition of the soil and its constituents, or in an unwise culture and indif ference to the selection of the best product for continuing the crop. We have many recorded instances of the very valuable results of care in selecting the largest and heaviest grains for seed. In some instances the crop has been quadrupled in quantity and quality by the use of the choicest seed selected from that with which the rest of the field was sown. When importing seed wheat and any other seed of new or superior varieties of plants, attention should always be directed to. the peculiarities of the soil and climate under which they originated, and those under which it is proposed to grow them. English varieties of spring wheat are sown in February or early in IVIarch, have the benefit of early spring growth, and of a milder and moister summer than a. spring sown wheat can have in the northern United States. The failure that has attended attempts to introduce English varieties of wheat is no new thing, such having been the almost universal result for many years past. The dis tinction between winter and spring wheat is one which arises entirely from the season in which, they have usually been sown, for they can read ily be converted into each other by sowing earlier or later, and gradually accelerating or retarding their growths. If a winter variety is caused to germinate slightly, and then checked. by cxposure to a low temperature, or freezing, until it can be sown in spring, it may be con verted into a spring wheat. The difference in color between red and white wheats is owing chiefly to the influence of the soil, white wheats gradually becoming darker and ultimately red in some stiff, wet soils, and red wheats losing their color and becoming first yellow and tben white in rich, light and mellow soils. The grain. changes color sooner than the chaff and straw, hence we have red wheats with white chaff, and. white wheats with red chaff. The hlue-stem,, long cultivated in Virginia, was formerly a red, but at length became a beautiful white wheat If it be true that each variety of grain is adapted: to a specific climate in which it grows perfectly, and where it does not degenerate when supplied. with proper and sufficient nourishment, may not. the consideration of the origin of each variety we propose to sow be of more importance than has yet been accorded to it in the selection of minor varieties, the product of our country? The. varieties of wheat that have originated, apparently. by accident, (for there are no accidents in nature)) or from peculiar culture, do not enjoy all the sur roundings necessary for perfect continuous pro duct. Causes yet unexplained are ever at work modifying the germ of the new growth, and the care of man is needed to preserve unimpaired, or to render perfect the already improved varieties That cross-fecundation and hybridization are pos- sible has been fully proved by the results of ex periments made by Maund and Raynbird, whose. Hybrid Cerealia received the prize medals at the industrial exhibition in London as long ago as. 1851; and that success has attended judicious. efforts to improve upon the ordinary wheat by continued careful selection of seed,is evident from_ the product of the Giant wheat and Pedigree wheat, grown by F. F. Hallett, of Brighton, Eng- land. By selecting from year to year not only the best heads of wheat, but the best kernels of the finest ears, and using them for seed, this gentleman has produced a variety possessing great fecundity of grain, extraordinary strength of stem, and a uniformity in the size of the ear. Some of the heads of these new varieties measured seven inches in length, and were proportionately thick. In some instances one kernel has produced seven ty-two heads, containing six thousand four hun dred and eighty grains, and a maximum product was obtained of sixty and sixty-two, and in one instance seventy-two bushels per acre. The high est results on the farm of Mr. Hallett were six quarters or fifty-six bushels per acre, which ap pears to have been produced, not upon a chosen zarden spot, but upon several acres. The large numbers named need not excite surprise or doubt .of their probability, since Schuyler county, III., has produced wheat heads six and a half inches long, and Talbot county, Md., has exhibited a field of nearly thirty acres which in 1860 yielded very nearly fifty-five bushels of wheat, of sixty pounds each, to the acre, and nine of which pro duced sixty-four and a half bushels upon each acre. This last was a smooth-headed wheat brought from North Carolina a few years before. William Hotchkiss, of Niagara county, N. Y., exhibited at the industrial exhibition in London in 1E351, the product of six acres in 1849-'50 which .averaged sixty-three and a half bushels to the acre, weighing sixty-three pounds to the bushel. This extraordinary yield was, however. exceeded in the summer of 1853 by Thomas Powell, of the mediately preceding, is not sold, being solely employed as the home seed. It is indeen true of late years, farmers have learned that not only must the land be in proper condition, and the season right, but that none but clean, well ripened seed must be sown and that the soil must be carefully and honestly prepared. What is required for winter wheat is a winter in which it will not be heaved by freezing and thawing and succeeding weather to keep it growing,with dry and rather cool weather for harvesting. Spring wheat requires similar weather except as to the winter. The three seasons preceding 1880 were of this character. Hence the wonderful crops of wheat, whole Western States producing the best averages of England in her best yeam. The following table of the several States men tioned shows as follows. The proportionate area represented compared with the entire winter wheat area in each State. The proportion sown same county, whose field of seven measured acres averaged within a small fraction of seventy bush els to the acre—namely, four hundred and eighty nine bushels of wheat. Mr. Hallett describes the system by which he produced his Pedigree wheat as follows : The best plant is called the selection of the year (say 1861) in which it is thus obtained, and consists of numerous ears containing many hundreds, and even thousands, of grains, which are planted separately, those of each ear being kept quite distinct, as, although the best grain of any plant is nearly always found to lie in its best ear, it may be otherwise, and the successive par ent ears must be preserved. At the following harrest (1862) the best plant forms the selection for 1863, and its produce is continued on the ex perimental ground, while that of the remaining plants furnishes the annual seed for the farm in the autumn of 1862, and the crops are in 1863 .offered to the public. Thus the selection sold is that of 1861, or in any year that of two years before. the latest selection, that of the year jai and drilled respectively. The estimated relative increase of product by drilling over that ob tained by sowing, collected for the year 1874. The proportion of spring wheat sown is about forty per cent. of the whole crop. It is grown mainly in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, almost to the exclusion of fall-sown wheat in those States. Michigan, though as far north as either, produces almost exclusively winter wheat, owing to the modifying influences of the surrounding waters, and perhaps in some degree to the soil, much of which has good natural drainage. One-third of the crop of Illinois (in the northern counties) is spring wheat. A small portion of that of Kansas is sown in the spring, and nearly all of that of Nebraska. California is anomalous in wheat as in everything else. Wheat can be sown all through the summer to sprout when rains fall, or it may be put in all through the rainy season till spring. In point o I fact, the planting season has actually a range of several months. The little grown in the New England States is nearly all spring wheat. In the Middle and Southern States,and in the West ern States not named above, fall sowing is almost the exclusive practice. A little is sown in the spring in New York and Pennsylvania. We have shown how the cultivation of wheat has steadily progressed westward, seeking the new and virgin soils. The time is coming how ever when this must cease. Then wheat will be grown in all the range of climate adapted to it, and form part of a regular rotation. When this is done, wheat may again be profitably grown wherever it has once succeeded, as it is now profitably grown, by that class of farmers who make it one of a series of crops, and who never exhausting their soil by running to one special crop for the present money it brings, from having eared to know that once the fertility of the soil is lost, it will cost more to again bring it back than it would to have kept it, as originally, fertile.