46 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Oct. 



Whether the farmer likes it or not,* there is growing a belief that 

 our farmers must be efficient or the nation is in danger. 



For farmers to become thoroughly efficient, it is necessary for 

 them to produce increasingly better plants and animals ; and in 

 order to produce better plants and animals it is necessary for the 

 farmers to become masters of the laws of breeding. By feeding, 

 we may get a better plant or animal but it is gotten at a greater 

 cost and the gain is temporary. By breeding a better plant or 

 animal, we get an improved plant or animal which if we under- 

 stand how, may be handed on to our children and to their children 

 for all time to come. An improved plant or animal gives us an 

 increased yield without extra labor or expense. 



We are far behind the enlightened nations of Europe in our 

 breeding of plants but perhaps not of animals. This comes from 

 a number of reasons. The American farmers have given more 

 attention to the breeding of animals than to the breeding of plants 

 and hence with a number of animals we are fully up to some of 

 the European nations. But in plant breeding especially, we are 

 far behind European nations. Our farmers have not reached the 

 stage where, with corn for example, the farmers are able to think 

 as yet of the influence of the male plant. When breeding animals, 

 we pay careful attention to the selection of the male animal, but 

 not so with plants. Most of our farmers do not feel that it makes 

 any difference what kind of male plant they breed to. 



Then too, for a number of reasons, we have been slow in 

 mastering the law of plant breeding. This comes in part from 

 the fact that farmers do not read the reports of the specialists. 

 Many of the reports are so technical and so poorly Englished that 

 only specialists can figure out the meaning. Farmers read 

 farm journals and unfortunately the reports of the specialists 

 do not find a place in the farm journals. John Fiske said that 

 ** It takes an idea a hundred years to get from the head of the 

 specialist to the heads of the common people." Let me illustrate 

 by an incident from the poultry business. Last spring I wrote a 

 short article for one of the poultry journals in which I tried to 

 make plain the advantage to be derived by a poultryman who 

 became master of the laws of breeding. From Texas, I received 

 a letter saying that the man had for ten years been asking the 

 poultry journals to give a series of articles to make clear some of 



