such soils, and at such a season, to retard vegetation by a starveling seed, would be a most perilous experiment, the young plant requiring all the nourishment which the plumpest kernel can supply, in order to preserve its existence and enable it to bear the rigor of the season during a protracted infancy.
The harvest of 1799 was the wettest that had been known for many years: farmers brewed beer from barley which the rains of heaven had malted. It was the general opinion that black, or even discolored barley, was very unsafe to be used for seed. Maltsters found that it would not sprout on their floors, with all the advantages of constant moisture and artificial heat. I tried the vegetative powers of barley in different tints of discoloration, and with different proportions of farinaceous substance in the kernel, and found, precisely as I had expected, that these had little or nothing to do with the mere process of germination. Twenty kernels, the thinnest and most meagre which could be selected, were planted in some rich garden mould, and kept in a warm room: every one of them germinated, tardily indeed, and having plenty of pap, though very little maternal milk, the radicle fibres spread, and the plants grew luxuriantly. Some of the blackest barley which could be found was afterwards sown in a garden; a large proportion of it grew and was healthy; the corculum of some kernels had been injured, probably rotted by excessive rains, and these made no effort to germinate. The two following are curious facts:—1. Sixty kernels of barley were taken from the floor of a neighbouring maltster which had been nineteen days on the heap, and had totally refused to germinate: they certainly never would have germinated there; I planted them in my garden, and of the sixty, forty-five grew as rapidly and vigorously as any barley I ever saw. It is evident, therefore, that warmth and moisture, however essential to germination, are not of themselves sufficient to excite it. The desideratum was probably a larger proportion of oxygen.—2. The second remarkable fact was presented in another experiment, by which it appeared, that barley would grow in a garden-pot, even after incipient germination had taken place in the ear as it had lain in the field six months before. Here was a complete suspension of vitality during several months without the destruction of it. But I should nevertheless think moderately of that man's prudence and judgment who, relying on the success of such petty experiments as these, should risk his next year’s crop by sowing barley which was shrunk and shrivelled, or which had already sprouted, or was the refuse of a maltster's floor.
To return to the mildew: some ingenious observations on this subject were published four or five years ago by Mr. Egremont,
