Hearded Wheat I do not know the statistical figures, but
my own experience is that a return of favour to the bearded or Rivets wheat is in evidence. This strange and beautiful plant, combining the virtues of wheat and barley, does not produce a refined grain : but it yields very heavily, it is a "sparrow starve's" for the beard acts as ehevaux-de-frise ; and the grain is at least as good as any other for poultry, which consume a good proportion of our home-grown wheat. We may perhaps see an increased popularity for rye. In Germany rye fields blue with cornflowers are as common a spectacle as wheat fields red with poppy in East Anglia. The plant has several virtues. It will grow on stubborn soils, uncongenial to other cereals, and the straw is the only straw useful for making such things as the straw mats used by intensive cultivators for their frames and for other forms of protection. And the intensive -culture of vegetables is growing very steadily and surely within Britain.
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