The Invincible Wheat
In the wild not more than one seed in "a myriad " successfully germinates, as Tennyson, the most careful of poets, pointed out in a later edition. In his first he had suggested one in fifty as the usual pro- portion. How different is the estimate in a well-drilled field. Nothing on the farms is more remarkable today than the closeness of the nap of the wheats. You would say not one seed in a hundred had failed. Many fields are so lush and green with wheat plants that the lines are scarcely perceptible, and the arable acres are much greener than the leys. On quite a number of farms the wheats have been treated as leys and fed down, to the great benefit of the milk supply and perhaps of the eventual grain crop. Certainly some of the finest yields I have ever seen have succeeded such grazed acres. I am told that for this operation the electrified wire has been a special boon. It enables the farmer (as the Danes above others have realised) to run a single wire fence round any area he desires. It is a tribute to the intelligence of cattle—and pigs— that they seldom venture to touch the live wire twice.
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