CHESS. Bromus. Brome-grass. Dr. Dar lington, in Weeds and Useful Plants, carefully and tersely describes this pest of our winter wheat fieldsdand also controverts the popular idea of transmutation. We know some other wise intelligent men, who still believe that wheat will turn to chess, nay, that oats will turn to timothy. It is needless to say it is a botanical impossibility, as much so as that wheat could turn to Indian corn. The description of chess is as follows : This foreigner is a well-known pest aniong our crops of wheat and rye,—and occasionally appears in the same fields, for a year or two, after the grain crop; but being an annual, it is soon choked out by tbe per eunial grasses; —and the fallen seeds remain; like myriads of others, until the ground iA again broken up, or put in a favorable state for their development. The best preventive of this and all similar evils, in the grain-field, is to sow none but good, clean seed. Among the curious, vulgar errors which yet infest the minds of credulous and care less observers of natural phe nomena, may be mentioned the firm belief of many of our farmers, (some of them, too, good practical farmers) that this troublesome grass is nothing inore than an ac eidental variety, or casual form, of degenerate wheat, produced by some untoward condition of the soil, or un propitious season, or some organic injury, though it must be admitted, I think, by the most inveterate de fender of that faith, that in undergoing the metamor phosis, the plant is surpris ingly uniform in its vagaries, in always assuming the exact structure and char acter of bromus. A similar hallucination has long prevailed among the peasantry of Europe, in relation to this supposed change of character in the grasses. But, in the Old World, they were
even more extravagant than with us; for they believed that wheat underwent sundry transmu tations, first changing to rye, then to barley, then to bromus, and finally from bromus to oats.
I believe the most credulous of our countrymen have not been able, as yet, to come up with their transatlantic brethren, in this matter. This grass has been cultivated *Tithin a few years as Wil lard's Bromus, and the seed sold at a high price. The farmers found that they not only did not get a valuable grass, but were really propagating a worthless and pernicious weed, being thus doubly cheated. The principal varieties are as follows: B. secalinus. Panicle spreading, even in fruit; spikelets ovate-oblong, eight and ten flowered; florets pubescent; awn short, sometimes very short or none; known as Cheat, Chess, Brome grass. B. racemosus. Panicle erect, contracted in fruit; lower palea decidedly ex ceeding the upper, bearing an awn of its own length ; known as Up right Chess, Smooth Brome-grass.
It is a worthless species found in grain-fields, as is B. mollis, which resembles the preceding, but has long awned flowers which, as also the leaves, are downy, and the spikelets are closely imbricated.
By some, the two are considered as forms of the same species. There are two native species of the genus, of no agricultural value. All the varieties of Chess, are of but little value in agriculture, and should be treated as weeds, and, in fact, are so treated by intelligent farmers in all sections.