BOTANICAL STUDY AND HISTORY. 235
prices paid for Woad proved one of the incentives to the deve-
lopment of intensive methods of cultivation by mediaeval Euro-
pean farmers. One consequence of this alteration of outlook and
modification of practice was the progressively increasing yield of
wheat from the XIII. century onwards, so clearly explained in the
concluding chapter of the work on "the Wheat Plant," published
in 1921 by Dr. Hurry's fellow-citizen, Prof. Percival of Reading.
The second part of that work, which deals with the taxonomy,
the characters, and the relationships of the wild species of Wheat,
and of the races and varieties of the cultivated forms, provides
us with what we need.
The chapter which deals historically with the yield of Wheat
since mediaeval days is not the only portion of Prof. Percival's
work comparable as regards purpose with that of Dr. Hurry.
What Prof. Percival tells us has been done, since the application
of ordered thought to the technique of plant-breeding began, to
supply wheat-growers with new cultivated forms, is equally
interesting. These forms have been designed to endure various
vicissitudes of climate; to resist the incidence of particular blights ;
to produce an out-turn adequate to meet the demands of local
labour. They have also been designed to yield grain that may
avoid disapproval by the miller, and flour that may escape
rejection by the baker. The consumer of bread, needless to say,
is not considered : he is supposed to be content to judge the
quality of what he is invited to eat by its appearance rather
than by its value as a food.
As an example of a cultivated crop, wheat possesses the ad-
vantage of persisting as a survival in England. How long it may
do so it would be unsafe to predict: among those who solicit our
suffrages because they long to control our doings, there are some
who deem wheat-growing in Britain an economic error comparable
with a proposal to resume the cultivation of Woad. But the only
wheats we are likely to see in English fields will be forms of that
cultivated "race" which Prof Percival terms Bread Wheat.
We shall not find, even as casual weeds, either of the two existing
wild species of Triticum ; we shall not find any form of the culti-
vated "race" which Prof. Percival terms Emmer, but which
scholars and botanists, ignoring the anachronism their action
implies, often misname a Spelt; we are not likely to meet in