Rocky Mountain husbandman. [volume] (Diamond City, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1881-07-21


appears few days before maturity, while
the head at the left shows it as it appears at
more advanced state of maturity. The
advocates of the supposed metamoryhosis
OF wheat into chess. claim that excessive
moisture and cold in the spring months
produce the change. Others suppose that
pasturlng in the spring will produce the ef-
feet iii question, while still others claim
that hauling wagon over a field after seed
ing, will change into chess every grain that
has been passed over by one of the wheels.
The first reason is assigned as the reason
why chess is so abundant this year. tits
undoubtedly a good one. but it does not
prove that excessive moisture and cold
transmute the wheat. The fac. is. that all
chess found in grain fields is the direct pro-
duct Of chess seeds. It is objected to this
statement that chess Is deaf or. in other
words, produces husks or chaff only, but
close examination of the flower of chess
shows that it is perfect flower, and pro-
duces grain which is as capable of repro
ducing itself, as that of wheat. The husk
of the chess is so thick that it protects the
grain from decay for several years when it
is too deep in the EARTH Chess requires
considerable moisture to induce it to germi-
nate, hence it is found most abundantly in
moist places; here it grows more rankly
than wheat does, and in short time over
shadows and chokes the wheat. and the
careless observer, seeing chess abundant
about harvest where wheat plants appeared
in the spring, concludes that the one has
been transformed into the other. The thick
hull or chatf Of the chess protects the al
luminous body from the operation of di-
gestion in the craw of birds, or stomachs of
horses or cattle. Birds passing over wheat
fields may drop chess seeds, and from the
droppings OF horses and cattle chess seeds
may germinate, hence it is not uncommon
to find chess growing about stumps and
logs in newly cleared lands.
The following experiment was made to
prove or disproye the transmutation OF
wheat into chess. A quantity of earth was
passed through fine sieve, to separate all
chess seeds. 1t was placed in a pan and
several heads Of wheat planted in it. When
the wheat came up it was subjected to all
the hard treatment that usually produces
winter-killng, viz: flooding with water,
and alternately freezing and thawing, for
several times. Late in the spring the whole
out in the open ground. When the plants
of wheat threw out their heads, there ap-
peared chess heads also. This mass of
wheat and chess plants was brought in and
placed before the committee. Stalks of
chess were shoVn, the roots of which were
found to proceed directly from the planted
heads of wheat, which yet remained entire.
and in some instances they were found to
issue from the half-decayed grains Of wheat
themselves. This was looked upon as con-
elusive. The roots were taken by the COM
mittee, and first soaked in water, after
which they were gently washed by moving
them backward and forward through it.
they were then carefully examined by a mi
croscope. The roots Of the chess were now
perceived to issue, not from near the end of
the grain of wheat as is usual in spreuting,
but from the side, and, in fact, from almost
any part. Further examination showed
that they merely passed through crevices in
the decayed wheat grains, and that they
We're separated from the grains without
tearing, being merely in contact, without
adhesion or connection. Some of the more
minute chess tibers were observed by an
achromatic microscope to extend over the
inner surface of the bran, where they had
gone in search Of nourishment (Which is
known to abound just within the bran) in
the same way that grape roots have been
observed to spread over the surface of a
rich decaying bone. But they easily sepa-
rated. and had no connection with the bone.
1t was satisfactorily proved that the chess
plant could not have come from these
grains, by the fact that the same single
stalk of chess was thus connected with tive
or six different grains, which could no
more have originated it than five or six
COWS could have one calf. The examina-
ton, therefore, did not prove anything in