COUNTRY LIFE
Mummy Wheat .
A rarely bountiful wheat harvest, over a wider wheat area than we have seen of recent years, has revived the trade in pure breeds and in new or newly regenerated breeds of the plant. Experiment in hybridization also has been revived. Wheat is no sooner cut than it is sown ; and some rash farmers are sowing consecutive crops without rotation. The wheat catalogues (as well as the bulb catalogues) are out.
• In one of them (Marsters of King's Lynn) is a photograph of a head of mummy wheat with a wise subscript legend, indicating a complete disbelief, now universal among men of science, in the myths of its longevity, which were indeed finally scotched by a French research worker, as told in a letter to The Times last week. Mummy wheat may, however, prove a -useful breed, as well as a quaint ; and its queerly bunched habit may hold unique virtues. It is, therefore, being freely used by modern experimenters as a parent plant ; and the -trials of it are not without promise.
Previous page
