Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Section II
Making of a Wheat Crop
“No wheat that has ever yet fallen under my observation exceeds the white which some years ago I
cultivated extensively; but which, from inattention during my absence from home of almost nine years
has got so mixed or degenerated as scarcely to retain any of its original characteristic properties. But
if the march of the Hessian fl y, southerly, cannot be arrested; . . . this white wheat must yield the palm
to the yellow bearded, which alone, it seems, is able to resist the depredations of that destructive
insect.”
George Washington,
in correspondence with John Bordley, 1788
