BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



broad, cylindrical ears, well capped at base and tip, the 

 kernels deep, compact, and in straight rows — had been 

 grown in Indiana, and represented the best from the whole 

 country. Along with these handsome ears was printed a 

 picture of the same number of other ears that had been 

 grown in Iowa. No two ears were alike except that they 

 were all poor. Of all the miserable, nubbiny, mouse-eaten, 

 degenerate ears of corn that had ever been grown, these 

 were certainly the worst — irregular rows, crooked cobs, 

 bare tips, yellow, white, and red all mixed together. 

 They were ears that most Iowa farmers would be ashamed 

 to husk. Yet this editor of a farm paper had the effrontery, 

 not only to show them to the readers outside of Iowa, but 

 even to offer to let some one plant them for seed in 

 comparison with the grand champion ears pictured along- 

 side. Any one could see which looked the best. He wanted 

 to know which yielded the most. 



Keen-eyed Wallace had been telling the farmers of Iowa 

 for a number of years that "looks mean nothing to a hog," 

 but this was going too far. Hadn't they been taught that 

 nothing but the very best ears should be saved for seed? 

 Perhaps this young editor of an old established farm paper 

 had lost his head entirely. 



Whatever the grower of the prize-winning ears may have 

 thought, he at least did not accept the offer to compare 

 his good seed on a yield basis. Either, in his mind, the con- 

 test wasn't worth bothering with, or possibly there was 

 more behind those scrawny ears than could be told by look- 

 ing at them. There was. Confidentially, they were no culls 

 from the corn crib. They were selected purposely to look 

 worse than usual, but at best they were nothing that a corn 

 grower would ever think of planting for seed unless he 

 knew something of the story of crossed corn. 



This story began about fifteen years before, when investi- 

 gators at the Carnegie Institution on Long Island and the 



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