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A GRAIN OF WHEAT

BY R. CHODAT

Reprinted from the POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, January, 1913.

[Reprinted from THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, January, 1913.]

A GRAIN OF WHEAT1

BY R. CHODAT

PEOFESSOB OP BOTANY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

PEOPLES truly rich are those who cultivate cereals on a large scale.
Scores of investigators in all civilized countries devote themselves
unceasingly to a problem of great social significance, viz., the increase of
the national wealth through progress in agriculture. The least dis-
covery in this field, whatever the political journals may say, is more im-
portant for a country than a change of the party in power. For it is
the history of discoveries and inventions — in the domain of nature, as
well as in the intellectual field — that constitutes the real history of
civilizations.

Thus the modern improvements in the industry of milling in con-
nection with better transportation facilities have helped to provide
better bread for all classes and have rendered famine impossible in the
Europe of to-day.

Is it then any wonder that since the most remote antiquity germi-
nating wheat has been the symbol of mysterious and hidden life, that in
their religious ceremonies the ancients attached so much importance to
cereals offered on the altar, that our modern artists, putting aside the
petty themes of political events, have glorified the beauty and nobility
of harvests, the poetry and mystery of sowing, in justly renowned
paintings? Roty's admirable sower on the French coins, who symbol-
izes the value of this idea, shows us the highest art seeking its inspira-
tion at the very source of civilization — the culture of wheat.

I do not wish to overtax your attention or indulge overmuch in
scientific pedantry by enumerating to you, together with their botanical
characteristics, the different kinds of wheat which have been and are still
cultivated. I shall merely give you as much as is essential for my pur-
pose. The most competent botanists in this field agree in recognizing
at least three species of wheat :

1. Einkorn (Triticum monococcum") .

2. Polish wheat (Triticum polonicum).

3. Wheat (Triticum sativum).

These distinctions are based not only on morphological characters,
but also on a character which is accepted on good grounds as usually

1 Presented before the General Meeting of the Societe" des Arts, Geneva
Switzerland. Translated from the French by Maude Kellerman.

VOL. LxxxiL-3. 272700 M:\:7V

34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

separating species from varieties, that is, their sterility when crossed
among themselves, or their failure to produce fertile offspring. At-
tempts to cross these types have never given results.

Ordinary wheat may be divided into numerous varieties or sub-
species, reciprocally fertile, which are grouped about the following sub-
species :

Emmer (T. dicoccum).

Spelt (T. spelta).

Wheat proper (T. tenax}.

The first two subspecies differ from the third in that the ear has a
fragile rachis and the grains remain covered by glumes which must be
removed by a somewhat complicated process, whereas in the third spe-
cies the grains on ripening fall from the ear the rachis of which is not
articulated. I shall give here only what is most essential for the under-
standing of what is to follow. Now, it is evident that emmer and spelt
are inferior to true wheat because of the fragility of the rachis of the ear
and because of their enclosed grains. Whenever it is possible wheat is
grown instead of emmer or spelt.

Not to prolong the discussion of these classifications, let us say at
once that wheat proper is represented in cultivation in various parts
of the world by a considerable number of varieties, but it is difficult
even for the specialist to distinguish them. One of these varieties,
having a non-articulated rachis (Triticum durum), the hard wheat of
the Mediterranean countries, is so closely related to emmer that the
systematic affinity of the wheats with an articulated rachis and those
with a non-articulated rachis can not be questioned.2 Each year, in
agricultural experiment stations organized according to the principles
of Vilmorin, Eimpau or Svalb'f, new races are brought to light and are
tested out in suitable soils and climates. I do not wish to tire you by
a dry enumeration of all these forms; even had I the time for it I
should not be competent to perform this task.

Which of all these varieties of cereals first appeared in cultivation ?
To this question we may reply that it is certain to-day that emmer was
cultivated by the Egyptians from the time of the first dynasty, or
about 6,000 years ago. The glumes preserved in the tombs show that
the grain was already at that time freed from its envelopes by the use
of special machines ; it was not simply flailed or tramped out by cattle.
Einkorn and emmer have also been found among the debris of the
granaries of the lake-dwellers of Switzerland. Hard wheat, which of
all the kinds of wheat proper most nearly resembles emmer, has also
been cultivated in Egypt since very ancient times. If we regard the

a Aaronsohn, Aaron, ' ' Agricultural and Botanical Explorations in Pales-
tine," Bulletin No. 180, United States Department of Agriculture, 1910, Bureau
of Plant Industry, 64 pp., 9 pis., 12 text figures.

A GRAIN OF WHEAT 35

matter from an evolutionary standpoint, according to which related
races, varieties and species had a common origin, we can arrive logically
at but one conclusion, namely, that the most ancient wheats were those
with a fragile rachis. One arrives at the same conclusion on com-
paring the cultivated barley, having an articulated rachis, with the wild
barley which has a fragile rachis.

The well-preserved emmer glumes in this bottle which I am going
to have passed around were found at Abusir in the tomb of the king
ISTewoser-re (Dyn. v. 2400 B.C.). This material was very kindly sent
me by the Oriental Society of Berlin.

If, on the other hand, we look to Europe and Asia to see in which
countries these ancient cereals are still cultivated, we shall find them
in the northern Jura, in the countries of the Basques, the Servians,
the Swabians and the Bactrians of Persia. We see that these cereals
have maintained themselves only in mountainous countries or among
the peoples most remote from the centers of civilization. The culti-
vation of emmer has long since disappeared from the fertile plains of
Egypt, where it was superseded by that of hard wheat.

Knowing, therefore, that the wheats cultivated in most ancient
times were those with a fragile rachis, we are confronted by a second
question : Where is the home of this type of wheat ? In what country
did our first parents, our prehistoric ancestors, find this plant, most
precious of all plants?

As for the einkorn, we know its home since the botanist Balansa
found it in Asia Minor. It is true that Balansa's wild plant differs
from the cultivated einkorn in certain characters and it has been named
Triticum monococcum, var. cegilipoides. But it has already been noted
that this species is too distinct from wheats to allow it to be considered
as their prototype.

For more than a century botanists and historians of civilization
have sought for the home of wheat. In vain have all the resources of
comparative morphology been employed, as well as those of history and
philology. The origin of wheat remains shrouded in mystery. The
ancients attributed its introduction into the world of men to some
beneficent goddess, thus putting the mystery of its first cultivation
back of all written history.

A botanist of great merit, Count Solms Laubach, weary of this dis-
cussion, finally advocated the idea that the wheat of the present day,
with its numerous varieties, might be the descendant of plants which
have to-day disappeared, either because their home was submerged by
the sea or because they were the result of a convergence of several
species deviating in the same direction or mixed in cultivation, which
would make the determination of their origin almost impossible.

In the universities the view has generally been held that, the home

36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of the wheat would always remain unknown and that our cultivated
species had been so greatly modified by cultivation that they scarcely
resembled the wild species which served our prehistoric parents in their
conscious or unconscious attempts at artificial selection. This trans-
formation, it was said, had required ages of time, and it was not over-
looked that it had also required extraordinary perspicacity on the part
of these half savages who succeeded in producing from an insignificant
grass the vigorous and precious cereal of to-day. It was admitted,
thus, that prehistoric man was endowed with a divining sense more
remarkable than that of the scientists of the present time, who, in the
domain of agriculture, have never achieved results equal to this. To
support this idea it might be maintained that the more primitive the
people the more acute is its sense of observation. Book science very
often sterilizes the excellent mentality natural to youth and also limits
the imagination.

However, I remember that when for the first time I found wild
cabbage growing on rocks at the seashore remote from all cultivated
fields, I was struck by the fact that even with my limitations of an
educated man and with all the mental deformation attendant on scien-
tific specialization which leads one away, they say, from common sense,
I should nevertheless, it seemed to me, not have hesitated, in case of
need, to try this plant as food, so inviting was its appearance. Last
year, in my botanical trip along the coast of Portugal, I was able to
see that the Portuguese peasant, who has kept so many vestiges of the
past in his dress, his domestic animals (long-horned cattle), his cart
and his customs, still uses the cabbage (Covo-gallego) as primitive
peoples would; the flower tops are simply boiled. There is a far cry
from this cabbage still so near its primitive state to the numerous
varieties which the agriculturists have introduced into our European
cultivation.

There is, then, reason to believe that primitive man found the
plants suitable for cultivation already showing the principal attributes
which make them useful; he found the cereals, he did not create them.
In other words, cereals are the. cause of civilization, not civilization the
cause of cereals.

Alphonse de Candolle, the illustrious father of the president of the
Societe des Arts, in his classic work on the origin of cultivated plants,
in 1883, says:

The Euphrates region, lying about in the middle of the zone of cultivation
[of wheat] which formerly extended from China to the Canary Islands, was very
probably the principal habitat of the species in very early prehistoric times.
Perhaps it extended towards Syria, as the climate is very similar, but to the
east and to the west of western Asia wheat has never existed except in a culti-
vated state, antedating, it is true, any known civilization.

A GRAIN OF WHEAT 37

This brings us to the main issue of the question which I wish to
study with you.

About 1902 two German botanists, well known in Geneva, Ascherson
and Schweinfurth, called the attention of a young agronomist, Mr.
Aaron Aaronsohn, who was destined in later years to become director
of the Haifa Agricultural Station in Palestine, to the scientific and his-
toric interest of determining the truth of a suggestion made by Kotschy.
This collector brought back from Syria a fragment of a wild plant
which Kornicke, an authority on cereals, recognized as a form of Triti-
cum dicoccum and which he made a variety under the name of T.
dicoccum dicoccoides.

From this mere indication Kornicke drew the same conclusions as
those A. de Candolle had reached by another road, i. e., that wheat
must be indigenous to Syria. In the course of a geognostic expedition
in Upper Galilee to the north of Lake Tiberias, Mr. Aaronsohn gave
his attention to this question, although he was very dubious about being
able to answer it.

As a matter of fact, modern botanists who have studied the flora
of Syria, such as Dr. Post, have not confirmed Kotschy's doubtful
indication. On the first expedition Mr. Aaronsohn found nothing, but
urged by his friends in Berlin he went to this same region again, and
this time his efforts were crowned with success. In June, 1906, being
at the north of Lake Tiberias at Eosh Pinah, he found a single speci-
men of the wild emmer (Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides} growing
in a rocky fissure. Complete success came, however, only on leaving
Easheya, where wild wheat abounded in uncultivated ground. Having
climbed Mt. Hermon, he descended on the opposite side, and towards
the village of Arny wild wheat was also very common and showed
here an extraordinary variety of forms; black glumes or only partly
black, black or colorless heads, smooth or hirsute glumes, glumes some-
times resembling those of Triticum monococcum (einkorn) or Trit-
icum durum (hard wheat), heads of the type of T. polonicum, etc.
Among these plants there was also the wild einkorn (T. monococcum
cegilipoides. This excessive variation, the abundance of these plants,
their distribution on the slopes of Mt. Hermon from an altitude of
1,500-2,000 m., all show that the plant is certainly indigenous.
It is a known fact that our cereals do not spread beyond cultiva-
tion in any country and that however extended their cultivation may
be they never become subspontaneous. In order to establish itself
in any locality a plant must hold its own against competitors which,
masters of the soil from time immemorial, have been selected to fit the
soil and climate. Moreover, emmer is not cultivated anywhere in
Palestine. This wild wheat is furthermore a different plant from any
known in cultivation, a polymorphous race, no doubt, but a distinct

38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

one, to which Kornicke had already given the varietal name dicoccoides.
No intermediate form between this wild plant and those cultivated in
Palestine has been found. Thus everything tends to show that wheat
is indigenous to Mt. Hermon. Somewhat later, Mr. Aaronsohn dis-
covered Secale montanum, the wild rye, in Antiliban. For philological
reasons it had formerly been thought that this was indigenous to
Europe. From now on we must bear in mind that this cereal also has
its center of distribution somewhere in Asia Minor.

That wheat was indigenous to Palestine was to be confirmed some-
what later by the same explorer. In 1908, while on a mission for the
Turkish government, Mr. Aaronsohn discovered wild barley, already
known at other stations, in the Moab country on the left bank of the
Dead Sea, above El Mazra-a; towards Wady "Wahleh monoliths occur
in large numbers and round about are many chipped flint implements.
The Jewish savant could not keep his fancy from roaming. He went
back in spirit to that far-away epoch, more ancient than all written
history, when urged by hunger while crossing these steppes, primitive
man first tried these savory grains and discovered cereals.

A little later in this same region of the Dead Sea, while on a second
expedition, Mr. Aaronsohn found emmer in great abundance, towards
Tel Nimrim, in the valley of the Jordan, at Ain-Hummar, on the
plateau of Es-Salt.

When one considers the fact that the grains of wild wheat are not
inferior either in weight or size to those of the best cultivated species
it would be impossible not to arrive at the conclusion that primitive
man did not create cereals, he found them.

One can imagine the nomads of the hills and mountains of Pales-
tine, giving these precious seeds to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia,
who were better situated than themselves for the testing of crops and
who succeeded with them in their rich alluvial plains. Glancing at the
Assyrian bas-relief, we are struck by the great importance given by this
people in their ceremonies to the mystery of the seed which contains
within itself the essence of life and, in consequence, the intense interest
which they manifested in all agriculture.

One of the most striking things in economic history is the rapidity
with which a new food or useful plant spreads even to little-civilized
countries. Schweinfurth, in his famous voyages to the heart of Africa,
found tobacco grown by the most primitive peoples. Hooker, exploring
the high valleys of the Himalayas, found the potato cultivated by the
Lepchas and the people of Nepaul, scarcely half a century after its
introduction into Europe as an important cultivated plant.

I have told in detail of the important discovery of Aaronsohn.
Let us see now what practical and scientific results can come from it.

A GRAIN OF WHEAT 39

In order to do so it is necessary to explain to you as briefly as possible
the present state of biological science and the modern way of consid-
ering the problems relating to species.

Modern botany, abandoning the ancient methods which depend
more on metaphysics and speculation than on experiments, has given
up the idea of discovering the origin of species by the prevalent method
of comparison and reasoning. The separation of forms, of varieties
and of species, as it is made by systematists, the herbarium specialists,
is based on judgment; it depends essentially on the degree of intuition
of the botanist who compares and draws conclusions. I do not mean
to say here that the methods of this science are conjectural, but I may
be permitted to say that it is only an outline of a science, that it is
provisional knowledge, a first attempt at classification. More precise
methods are necessary in order to resolve serious biological questions.
The best representatives of contemporary biological science are much
less hurried than their predecessors; they have acquired the conviction
that there is no short cut to truth. The scientific highway is paved
with difficulties. In this explanation, then, I shall not touch upon
the evolutionary speculations of Darwin or others, but shall give my
time exclusively to exact data.

Contemporary biology accepts the constancy of types as a well-
established fact. It has discovered that this constancy is experi-
mentally demonstrable if the following facts, not known to Darwin
and his followers, be taken into account.

Every species in its natural state, and often even in cultivation,
includes a large number of forms which were formerly considered
variations, but which, analyzed by modern methods, appear to be con-
stant types, all of which taken together form the Linnean species. In
order to discover these small constant species which ordinarily live
mixed together, it is necessary to segregate them. Vilmorin had
already recognized that unequivocal results could not be obtained in
the study of variation if one starts with an isolated plant or even with
a single seed. A single grain of wheat may be the ancestor of innu-
merable generations. If these isolated grains, carefully catalogued, be
sown separately, it is seen that they give birth to constant races or
lines which are called pure, because they are without mixture. To
evaluate these lines and differentiate them from other lines, we must
not consider the isolated individual, but rather note the character of
the descendants as a whole by means of experimental pure cultures.
The individuals of the same race, of the same line, may differ very
much according to their age, nutrition, position during the embryonic
or ontogenic development, but their descendants taken as a whole are
identical. In a pure race, the dwarfs as well as the giants give birth

40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to a mediocre line having the same average size (and other values
which I can not cite here) . In other words, the sum of the descendants
is identical with the sum of the ascendants.

Each race differs from the others in form, stature, hardiness and
chemical composition. The name population has been given to the
mixtures of races, such as nature gives us in a meadow or such as we
have in cultivation when segregation has not been carried far enough,
that is to say, when pure lines which can be distinguished have not
been separated grain by grain. This practise of selection, according
to Vilmorin, has already been tested not only in the vast field of theo-
retical botany, but also in that of applied botany. At Svalof, Sweden,
cereals are selected according to this principle by evaluating the differ-
ences by numerical methods. All agricultural Europe follows with
special attention the classic experiments of Nilson and his collaborators.
Except for the very rare phenomenon of spontaneous variation
(mutation) we can by beginning with these pure lines operate in a
practical way, with almost mathematical certainty, the probable error
being minimal. In cereals, and especially in wheat, the characters to
be studied which will be constant for a given race are: stooling, regu-
larity of growth (that is, greater or less individual variation), average
weight of the grains, resistance of the straw to lodging, length of the
straw, form and length of the heads, composition of the grain (starch,
sugar, nitrogen, fat, etc.), disease-resistance. In the short time at my
disposal I can not explain to you the ingenious methods used to deter-
mine with precision these different characters. I wish to add only
one thing. Each of these characters or their combination in pairs or
groups determines the probability of success and good harvest in a
given locality, and, in consequence, the more constant forms, the more
pure lines there are, the more prepared will scientific agriculture be
to furnish to cultivators races which will suit their soils. Now if you
consider that these problems are among those that chiefly interest
mankind, which demands each day its daily bread, you will understand
that the slightest discovery which makes for the betterment of cereals
means a noticeable increase in the wealth of a nation. If France is
one of the richest countries of the world it is because her wheat
production is superior, in respect to her territory, to that of all her
competitors.

Now, modern agriculture, given new life by botany, has obtained
in France, Germany and other civilized countries, a considerable num-
ber of these varieties, starting from cereals introduced into our country
in the course of the long history of civilization; that is, from times
more ancient than any documents written on parchment or carved in
stone.

A GRAIN OF WHEAT 41

But let us remember the important results of Aaronsohn's discov-
eries : Primitive man, even he who chipped the flints abounding about
the menhirs of the Moab country, as he sought his food in the steppes,
found fields of cereals waving in the breeze just as the graceful heads
of Stipa sway in the breeze of our fields of our canton of Valais. The
wild wheat, Triticum dicoccoides, with its large grains, must have
immediately caught the attention of a primitive people, interested in
nature as are all peoples whose eyes have not been closed and whose
sense of observation has not been dulled by too much book learning.

Is it not a singular coincidence that this young Jew, Mr. Aaron-
sohn, should rediscover in Judea the origin of our cereals, of our
civilization ? There is material in that for a philosopher or a historian
to write a moving page. I have the pleasure of counting Mr. Aaron-
sohn among my botanical friends, and I may say to you that rarely
has an important discovery been made by a more genial and charming
man. Those who say that man is master of his fate may well cite him
as an example. But let us rather listen to him :

JEWISH AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION
HAIFA, PALESTINE

26 Jan., 1911
MONSIEUR CHODAT,

Professeur a la Faculty des Sciences, Geneve.

Dear Sir: I have just received your kind letter of the 3d inst., which recalled
to me our agreeable and interesting conversations during the Congress at Brussels.
I am very much flattered to learn of the subject that you have chosen for the
annual meeting of the Society des Arts.

I shall be glad to send you the "corps du delit" which you wish; I shall
also take the liberty of sending some photographs taken last June which will
give you an idea of the appearance of the fields where my Triticum flourishes.
You will doubtless be glad to learn that we have this year sown more than an
acre of Triticum dicoccoides. We intend to study the value of this plant for
forage, etc. I had the good fortune to discover in Upper Galilee this year a
spontaneous hybrid of Triticum and ffigilops, and there also exists already a
wheat with a non-articulate raehis, arising from a cross of my Triticum and a
cultivated wheat. Thus you see that we are rapidly advancing towards the
realization of our dream. In the different experimental fields where my
Triticum has been grown it has resisted rust very well, and this for three or
four successive years while many check varieties succumbed to this disease.
In these times of "unit characters" it should not be difficult to fix this special
property of disease-resistance, and you will at once realize the practical signifi-
cance and the economic value of this character.

As for the problem of the origin of civilization or the origin of wheat
culture, I have resolved upon a new method of attack. I had first taken up the
study of adventitious plants accompanying our cereals. Thus the discovery of
Lolmm temulentum, quite spontaneous in a given region, far from all cultiva
tion, would be a sufficient reason, in my opinion, for inaugurating a search in
this neighborhood for the cradle of our cereals. Now, I am on another trail.

42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

I wish to study the cryptogamic diseases of my wild wheat in order to try to
discover if among them there are any peculiar to wheat in other regions and
which here would attack other plants. We could then say this or that cryptogam
was carried by cereals and would be found in the same situation in relation to
wheat, as certain phanerogamic satellites such as Lolium temulentum, Githago
segetum, etc., etc.

I am sending with this letter a small photograph showing our workmen
sowing Triticum dicoccoides with a drill. I shall not conceal from you that I am
very proud that when for the first time since prehistoric times man has again
tried sowing the prototype of wheat, this work has fallen to Jews (escaped from
the ignoble massacres of Bussia), Jewish teams working on Jewish ground, the
historic cradle of the race.

Yours sincerely,

A. AAKONSOHN

You perceive the wide field which this discovery has opened up.
The utilization for new needs of new races of wheat to be segregated
from this wild material, that is, from the polymorphic plant popula-
tions of the hills of Judea, the extension of the cultivation of cereals
to arid regions or mountainous zones, where it has hitherto not been
possible.

But there is more than that. We possess now, and Mr. Aaronsohn
alludes to it in his letter, a second method of improving wheat by the
method of selection, growing pure races from single seeds.

We can, by crossing, create new races and in this domain modern
methods have a startling precision. They say that the man who sud-
denly had a new world revealed to him by the microscope lost his
reason. To-day, placed in the presence of the facts brought to light
by modern biological analysis, we can see in our minds an infinite line
of discoveries which were not even suspected by the generations pre-
ceding us.

Here, in a few words, are the results already obtained :

They lead us to suppose the existence of essential representative
particles within the germ cells of plants. These particles may be com-
pared to the atoms which chemists suppose to exist in the inanimate
world. These are the biological elements, the " organic corpuscles "
as Buffon would have called them. We call them " gens." The body
of the plant with its diverse characters is then only the exterior mani-
festation of these " determinants." We suppose, then, that each char-
acter manifested is determined by a "gen," a "determinant." To
constitute an organism with its characters there must be an association
of gens.

For the sake of similarity in studies on heredity plants belonging to
the same systematic grouping, the same genus or the same species, are
usually compared. Only the characters in which these two plants
differ are taken into account. For example, a race X will differ from

A GRAIN OF WHEAT 43

a race Y by three characters, i. e., by the gens A B C (for example,
A = long head; 5 = awned glumes; (7 = rust resistance), to which
the race Y opposes ab c. These are antagonistic characters (a = short
head; & = awnless glumes; c = capacity for rust infection). A is the
antagonist of a, B of &, etc. But A is not antagonistic to 6 or c, nor
B to a and c.

As long as the plant is self-fertilized, the mosaic of its characters is
maintained. But if it is fertilized by a distinct race several cases can
arise in the course of successive generations. The product called a
hybrid (Fj^ films 1) is evidently the sum of the two parents
(X -J- Y) ; if forms not closely related to each other are crossed, the
hybrid generally takes a form intermediate between the two parents.
We shall not speak of these hybrids here, for they are generally sterile
and practically useless for cereal culture. If, on the other hand,
closely related forms are fused in the hybrid (Fx) the characters of the
father or the mother exclude those of the other parent; one of the
parents seems to have been absorbed by the other. Then we say that
the character of the father or of the mother dominates or vice versa.
Let us take two parents X and Y, differing in the antagonistic char-
acters A B C for X and a b c for Y. The hybrid (F1 = X + Y) will
have the appearance A, B, C, if the total gens of X dominate those of
Y, or the appearance a, &, c in the contrary case. In other words, one
of the parents may seem to be absorbed by the other. But it often
happens that if A dominates a, & dominates B, c dominates (7.

But if this hybrid (Fx) is allowed to fertilize itself, its direct
descendants, i. e., the second generation (F2), show that the character
or characters which had disappeared reappear in a proportion which
can be predicted with almost mathematical certainty. I can not take
the time to explain to you the details of this phenomenon. But the
most astonishing thing is that among the descendants of the second
generation (F2) (that is, the descendants of the hybrid by self-fertiliza-
tion) there are (1) those resembling the father exclusively (X), or
the mother (Y) ; (2) new forms, *. e., those in which a part of the
paternal and maternal characters are combined in a new mosaic.

To choose a very simple example, if the two parents differed by
their two pairs of characters A B and a 1}, the hybrid of the first gen-
eration (Fx) would bear the apparent characters A B or a ~b, that is,
it would resemble the father or the mother exclusively, according to
the predominance; that of the generation (F2) would comprise indi-
viduals of different sorts: AB, Ah, Ba, db. The two combinations Ab
and Ba are new.

If, in a second case, the antagonistic gens are ABC for (X) and
a & c for (Y), the first generation might be A B C, but in the second

44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

we should have a larger number of categories of types; now, of these
types there would be eight categories which would be constant. These
would be ABC, A B c, A b C, a B C, Abe, a B c, a~b C, abc; two of
these types repeat the primitive parents, the others are new. If these
latter are not allowed to fertilize each other or to be ferilized by other
forms, but are self -fertilized, they will be constant in their descendance,
which will behave like a new stable species.

From this we see that the mosaics of gens, which constitute the
hereditary capital of species and varieties, are dissociable and that the
gens, in the phenomena preceding or accompanying fecundation,
execute a sort of chasse-croise, the final result of which is determined
by the laws of probability.

The number of types and new forms increases rapidly with the
number of antagonistic characters. For 2 antagonistic gens there will
be 4 types; for 3 gens, 8 types; for 4 gens, 16 types; for 5 gens, 32
types; for 6 gens, 64 types; for 7 gens, 128 types — and these types are
constant from the second generation (in which they appeared) on.

Here we have infinite perspectives which appear on our new scien-
tific horizon.

But to obtain these remarkable results with the desired mathe-
matical certainty we must start with biological unity, with a pure line,
with a single grain of wheat, the parent of a whole line similar to it.

From this we see the importance of Aaronsohn's discovery; it will
allow us to do methodically in a few years all that 6,000 years of culti-
vation and unconscious selection have gained for us and perhaps also
to combine and associate characters which escaped the intuitive observa-
tions of primitive peoples.

For example, we can associate the hardiness of the wild wheat with
the vigor of growth of a cultivated wheat, the rust resistance of a wild
variety with the seed quality of a cultivated variety, etc.3

But wheat is not for agriculture, wheat is to make bread. This
making of bread is almost as old as the cultivation of wheat, and yet
the conditions of fermentation necessary to raise the dough under the
influence of leaven are still insufficiently known. We know that in
this sour dough, the natural leaven, there are lactic bacteria which
secrete an acid and give off a gas as well as alcohol. By means of this
fermentation the dough, permeated by the gas which raises it, gives a
lighter, more digestible bread. We are far from knowing all of the
details of the process of bread fermentation. However that may be,
for ages beer yeast has been introduced into the leaven, or, as in the
time of the Eomans, the "must of fermenting wine." These yeasts

"Bateson, "Mendelism," Cambridge, 1909. See ' ' Mendelism, " Punnet, E.
C., ed. 7, Cambridge, 1909, p. 58.

A GRAIN OF WHEAT 45

are minute fungi invisible to the naked eye which attack the sugar of
the bread and transform it into carbonic-acid gas and alcohol. The
course of this fermentation is controlled by the presence of lactic bac-
teria which prevent the growth of putrefactive organisms. But here
again there are lactic bacteria and lactic bacteria, yeasts and yeasts.
These yeasts are again populations, mixtures of different races from
which the microbiologist can select pure lines. Here Vilmorin's
method must be used, i. e., filiation from a single isolated germ.
Thanks to this process, Hansen and others have selected a large number
of strains of yeasts, each with its particular character. For science
of to-day beer yeast no longer exists, but in its place there are many
distinct and constant species just as there are many distinct and con-
stant species of lactic bacteria. The problem of the future will be,
then, to regulate bread fermentation by means of these selected
microorganisms.

But certain flours do not rise well. Suitable ferments must be
found for them. Others, like maize flour, do not rise at all. It is
therefore impossible to make bread from maize alone. In 1900, at
the time of the World's Exposition at Paris, I was asked this question :
" How can we find a ferment to raise dough made from maize ? " No
yeast tried up to that time had been able to accomplish this. I then
thought of using ferment from India which I had procured through
Colonel Prain, director of the Kew Botanic Garden. In applying these
selection methods the late Mr. A. Netchich and I obtained from these
ferments, which are employed in Sikkim and the Khasia Mountains for
the alcoholic fermentation of rice and Eleusine, a leaven, which alone
or associated with other yeast causes maize dough to rise and thus
allows bread to be made from it. We dedicated this species to Dr.
Prain (Amylomyces Prainii = Mucor Prainii}. I take this oppor-
tunity of announcing this discovery and putting it in reach of all those
who wish to profit by it.

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