ar this, and as
soon as you can find a few minutes to spare, I earnestly beg you to let
me hear what has happened.

LETTER 750. TO A. STEPHEN WILSON.

(750/1. The following letters refer to two forms of wheat cultivated in
Russia under the names Kubanka and Saxonka, which had been sent to Mr.
Darwin by Dr. Asher from Samara, and were placed in the hands of Mr.
Wilson that he might test the belief prevalent in Russia that Kubanka
"grown repeatedly on inferior soil," assumes "the form of Saxonka." Mr.
Wilson's paper of 1880 gives the results of his inquiry. He concludes
(basing his views partly on analogous cases and partly on his study of
the Russian wheats) that the supposed transformation is explicable in
chief part by the greater fertility of the Saxonka wheat leading to
extermination of the other form. According to Mr. Wilson, therefore,
the Saxonka survivors are incorrectly assumed to be the result of the
conversion of one form into the other.)

Down, April 24th, 1878.

I send you herewith some specimens which may perhaps interest you, as
you have so carefully studied the varieties of wheat. Anyhow, they are
of no use to me, as I have neither knowledge nor time sufficient. They
were sent me by the Governor of the Province of Samara, in Russia, at
the request of Dr. Asher (son of the great Berlin publisher) who farmed
for some years in the province. The specimen marked Kubanka is a very
valuable kind, but which keeps true only when cultivated in fresh
steppe-land in Samara, and in Saratoff. After two years it degenerates
into the variety Saxonica, or its synonym Ghirca. The latter alone is
imported into this country. Dr. Asher says that it is universally known,
and he has himself witnessed the fact, that if grain of the Kubanka is
sown in the same steppe-land for more than two years it changes into
Saxonica. He has seen a field with parts still Kubanka and the remainder
Saxonica. On this account the Government, in letting steppe-land,
contracts that after two years wheat must not be sown until an interval
of eight years. The ears of the two kinds appear different, as you will
see, but the chief difference is in the quality of the grains. Dr. Asher
has witnessed sales of equal weights of Kubanka and Saxonica grain,
and the price of the former was to that of the latter as 7 to 4. The
peasants say that the change commences in the terminal grain of the
ear. The most remarkable point, as Dr. Asher positively asserts