OF SCOTLAND.

479

as seed ; because, on trying experiments on this subject, suchwere found to vegetate.” Although there is no direct expe-rience on this subject, the analogy of man and animals givestrong grounds for believing that a compliance with this opi-nion in practice may be attended with imminent danger. Menand animals, though afflicted by many and heavy diseases,can propagate their kinds; yet experience evinces, that ahealthy and vigorous progeny is infinitely more to be expect-ed from healthy and vigorous parents than from those whichare diseased. This is not the place to discuss the subject ofhereditary diseases; but certainly no sensible person wouldexpect handsome cattle, from a poor-shaped bull or cow, fineWoolled sheep from those having coarse fleeces, or a racerfrom a cross-bred hackney. That light, defective, or diseasedwheat will vegetate, there is no disputing; yet it is much tobe feared, that the defects of the seed may be communicatedto the produce ; and these may even, as in some hereditarydiseases of man and animals, pass over one generation, andbreak out with virulence on that which succeeds. An expe-rienced agriculturist asserts with confidence, and we givehim entire credit, “ that he has seen fields partly sown withsound, and partly with mildewed wheat, and that the dif-ference was discernible at one glance even in the wintermonths, during the first stage of their growth

As on all such subjects the result of comparative experimentscarefully conducted are of infinitely more importance thanthe finest reasonings, the freedom is, therefore, used to bor-row from the last quoted author a decisive experiment in fa-vour of using perfectly ripened and well harvested seed-wheatin preference to* that which is light or imperfect f.

“ The late Benjamin Bell, Esq. in October J 783, sowed afield of twelve acres at Ilunthill in Roxburghshire with 54

Brown’s Treatise on Rural Affairs.

f Ibid.