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Darwin Correspondence Project

From G. M. Asher   7 November 1877

8 Cambridge Terrace, Railton Rd Brixton

Nov 7.77

Dear Sir

Almost immediately after receiving your kind letter (which I sent as an autograph to my sister) I wrote for some seeds.1 But you will at once perceive from the facts I am going to state, that the question cannot be solved in the manner you think. As regards my statements I must apologize for my making them without even a boy’s knowledge of botany; a want which I had reason to regret and which indeed is the principal motive for my writing to you, in order to request you to induce some young botanist to study the questions at issue. The facts I mean are:

1) The wheat is summer wheat; and it is, therefore, impossible that any large number of seeds could have withstood the 30 dgr. Réaur of cold occuring almost every winter in the parts I am speaking of.2

2/ Only the blade and ear perform the jumping change; the grain however goes through numberless transitions. For all the differences observed by corn-dealers and millers between their different sorts of samples are no doubt botanical differences worthy a botanist’s attention; and especially worthy, for the Darwinite doctrines of being closely studied.

3/ As in those parts no manure is employed, the differences are caused by the nature of the soil; and especially by the degrees of what is there called freshness. Fresh soil meaning virgin soil, for the first time turned into arable land after having always been virgin steppe. The two first years after that has been done almost every soil will produce Kubanka wheat. Afterwards however the differences between the soils become very considerable. Some will soon again after these two crops produce Kubanka; only a year or two of fallow being required; while on some the wheat turns into Saxonca; unless long periods—at least 8 or 10 years—be interposed between the cultivating periods of two or three years.

These facts are evidently sufficient to show that, as I already said, the question cannot be so easily solved. There are however a number of other facts observed by me with the utmost roughness and inaccuracy which are well worthy of scientific investigation. I shall only speak of two such questions; relating both not to the wheat itself but to the grasses of the steppe.

1) There is a grass called by the Germans Ziegenbart,3 on account of its likeness to feathers, which indicates the value of the land for the cultivation of Kubanka-wheat. The virgin steppe is overgrown with that white feathery grass, which gives it a most peculiar whitish aspect. As the use of manure is impossible on the enormous areas of land, distant from villages and farms; and out of all proportion to the quantity of cattle kept; the land is used only two years in succession and then remains fallow. For the purpose of Kubanka-growing it must remain fallow until the Ziegenbart grass appears again. Now this reappearing of a grass, destroyed for the sake of cultivation; and its gradual return, in the same measure as the soil becomes more similar to what it was before the breaking up, is certainly worthy of study.

2. Another remarkable fact, as to the grasses, is that the year after the cultivation of wheat, on the fallow, there appears some grasses specially valuable for the feeding of sheep. These grasses last only one year. The following year, no sheep feeder will take such land as pasture.

These facts are, I believe fully sufficient to show how desirable it would be that the wheat-growing of the steppe, with its alternations of breaking up virgin soil or many years’ fallow, and two or three years’ sowing; with its variety of wild grasses indicative of variety of soil; with its ever changing varieties of seed should be properly investigated.

A young man willing to do so would not require any knowledge of Russian. There are 300,000 German peasants on the steppe; and as they are much more attentive observers than their Russian neighbours; and as they together cultivate land more extensive than the kingdom of Saxony, all necessary inquiries may be made with their help.4 They offer besides the advantages of being a very cleanly sort of people; and as I lived two years among them I believe that a young naturalist would not find it difficult to do, what I, a man of nearly fifty have done.

I should, of course, be very glad to offer any further suggestions that it will be in my power to make. Meanwhile I remain Dear Sir | Yours obdtly | Dr G. M. Asher | late professor in the University | of Heidelberg.

CD annotations

1.6 in order … at issue. 1.7] ‘X’ added pencil
2.1 1) … speaking of. 2.3] ‘X’ added pencil

Footnotes

CD’s letters to Asher have not been found, but see the letter from G. M. Asher to John Murray, 1 November 1877 and n. 3. Asher wanted to draw CD’s attention to the apparent transformation of one variety of wheat into another. Asher’s sister was Rosa Löwenfeld.
Asher had made his observations in German farming communities on the Volga (see letter from G. M. Asher to John Murray, 1 November 1877). Réaur: Réaumur, a temperature scale with the freezing point of water at 0° and the boiling point at 80°.
In modern German, Ziegenbart (goat’s beard) refers to a mushroom species, but it formerly referred to the grass Corynephorus canescens (gray clubawn grass); it grows on sand dunes in small clumps, so is unlikely to be the grass Asher intended. The grass may have been Stipa pennata (feather grass) or Stipa lessingiana (needle grass). For grass species found on the Russian steppe, and their succession, see Boonman and Mikhalev 2005.
On the history of the German communities on the Volga, see F. C. Koch 1977.

Bibliography

Boonman, Joseph G. and Mikhalev, Sergey S. 2005. The Russian steppe. In Grasslands of the world, edited by J. M. Suttie et al. Plant production and protection series no. 34. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Koch, Fred C. 1977. The Volga Germans in Russia and the Americas, from 1763 to the present. University Park, Penn., and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Summary

On receiving CD’s letter GMA wrote for wheat seeds to send CD. Gives information on the wheat and on grasses to suggest that variability of the soil accounts for replacement of kubanka by saxonka.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11228
From
Georg Michael Asher
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
London, Cambridge Terrace, 8
Source of text
DAR 159: 117
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11228,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11228.xml

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