No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 481 



combinations for color and exquisitely varied perfumes? These 

 silent influences are unconsciously felt even by those who do not ap- 

 preciate them consciously, and thus with better and still better 

 fruits, nuts, grains and flowers will the earth be transformed and 

 man's thoughts turned from the base, destructive forces into the 

 nobler productive ones, which will lift him to higher planes of action 

 towards that happy day when man shall ofTer his brother, not bul- 

 lets and bayonets, but richer grains, better fruits and fairer flowers. 



''Cultivation and care may help plants to do better work tempor- 

 arily, but by breeding plants may be brought into existence which 

 will do better work always, in all places and for all time. Plants 

 are to be produced which will perform their appointed work better, 

 quicker, and with the utmost precision." 



A company in Illinois has a tract of 27,000 acres upon which they 

 propose, if possible, to so breed the standard varieties of corn as 

 to give the greatest feeding value per acre. They propose to breed 

 corn with varying per cents, of fat or protein as seems possible by 

 the experiments of the Illinois Station. If a company had proposed 

 to breed Holstein-Friesians whose milk would contain a higher per 

 cent, of butter-fat it would not be considered remarkable, yet the 

 definite breeding of farm crops is so unusual as to create great in- 

 terest in this new enterprise. The fundamental principles in breed- 

 ing are the same whether applied to plants or animals. 



Causes for Delay in Improvement of Field Crops : A number of 

 circumstances have prevented the application of the principles of 

 breeding to plants, although they have been applied to the breed- 

 ing of animals for many years. Among the circumstances are the 

 , following: 



(1) Lack of knowledge of sex in plants. The sexes in animals 

 must have been known from the earliest times. The function of 

 pollen and its necessity for seed formation has been known less 

 than 400 years. 



(2) The difficulty of control in plant breeding. The pollen of 

 plants cannot ordinarily be confined, while the male domestic ani- 

 mal can be tied up by a halter or confined in a yard. In some plants, 

 like corn, which is wind-fertilized, we have no knowledge of the plant 

 from which the pollen came and consequently no knowledge of the 

 characteristics of the sire. In other plants, like wheat, that are 

 self-fertilized, two individuals cannot be mated without resorting to 

 artificial means. 



(3) The selection is usually made from the seeds. The seed is an 

 embryo, not a mature individual. The characteristics of the mature 

 chicken cannot be fully foretold by looking at the egg. The seed 

 must be grown and the plant observed through youth, maturity and 

 old age, before the characteristics of the individual plant are fully 

 known. The individual animals are constantly under the eye of 

 the successful breeder. The poorer animals are rejected and only 

 the better animals mated. In the case of plants there is not only 

 usually no mating but the mature individual from which the embryo 

 is obtained for the subsequent progeny is unknown. This is not 

 quite so true of maize as of the other cereals, because of the method 

 of harvesting the crop. Even if the large ear of maize is a measure 

 of the productiveness of the individual corn plant, the character 



31—7—1904 



