The Choice of Seeds in Selection. 
333 
tions can only give the best possible result when they 
are combined with the highest germinal capacity. 
For this reason in agricultural practice and occasion- 
ally also in horticulture special attention is often paid 
to the individual seed. The points to which attention is 
paid are, on the one hand, the size and weight of the 
individual seeds and, on the other, the place of their 
origin on the parent plant. The practice of selection in 
cereals consists essentially in the choice of the largest and 
heaviest seeds, or more 
strictly, in the elimina- 
tion of the smaller ones by 
winnowing machines or 
other devices. 1 When the 
object is to produce small 
families to serve as the 
stocks of new races, meas- 
urement and weighing of 
the individual seeds is rec- 
ommended by the best 
authorities, and special 
trays for determiningtheir 
weight have been devised. 2 
An important advance 
in the method of selection 
has been made in recent years by VAN DE VELDE who 
1 See VON RUMKER, Getreidezuchtung, 1889, and VON RUMKER, 
Dcr idrthschaftliche Mehnverth guter CuUurvarietaten und ausge- 
lesenen Saatgutes, Arbeiten der D. Landw. Gesellsch., 1898, Pt. 36, 
p. 127. 
2 VON RUMKER, Journ. fiir Landzvirthschaft, 39. Jahrg., Pt. 2, 
p. 129. 
' The specimens from which this drawing was made I owe to 
the kindness of Messrs. KUHN & Co., beet seedsmen in Naarden, 
Holland. They were taken from selected beets of the very high 
Fig. 62. Clumps of fruits of the 
sugar beet ; half schematic. A, 
two ripe clumps on a stem ; B, one 
of these cut longitudinally snow- 
ing the three seeds in the three 
special fruits. 3 
