36 PLANT BKEEDING. 



takes the youfh from among the steady-going things of the country 

 or village home, develops his latent faculties in some line o f art or 

 science for which he has shown a bent, and fixes the habits and ambi- 

 tions of his life on some specialty, so we must discern new powers in 

 plant and animal life, and by means of environment (or by cross- 

 breeding or hybridizing) give it development, and by extensive and 

 intensive selection fix it as a tyj)e. And we can not stop with having 

 built up new types. We must not even be content with letting them 

 stand still. The saying that " man can not stand still — he must pro- 

 .gress or he will go backward," is as true of improved varieties of 

 plants as of men. Give the Indian boy an education, even educate 

 him as a specialist, and j)lace him back among his own uncivilized 

 people, and he will generally return to nearly their standard of living. 

 The higher a variety is specialized under the art of the breeder and 

 under the nurture of improved conditions, the more difficult it is to 

 keep up its high qualities. Not only must the high nurture be kept 

 up, but the selection also must be continued, or retrogression toward 

 the old primitive type may be expected. Breeding upward special- 

 izes a variety of i^lants or animals for definite conditions, and to 

 secure the full value of the improved blood of a plant or animal it 

 must continue to be kept under those good conditions. 



From formal experimentation we may not produce the greatest 

 wonders. These may arise as accidental variations in the course of 

 common plant jjroduction. In fact, most of the varieties we now have 

 were originated by picking up these odd forms, and from a small 

 beginning, persistently followed up, greater variation was produced 

 and then fixed to uniform types. The numbers of plants and animals 

 bred under the varying conditions of common production are so vastly 

 greater than the number which the breeders of plants and animals 

 can deal with that it is not strange that a larger number of useful 

 variations arise there than in the small fields and farms of the 

 professional breeders. 



As knowledge among men accumulates from generation to genera- 

 tion, there is more impulse for still greater development of thought. 

 The thought of one decade is not only a basis for better thought in 

 the next generation, but it is an exciting cause of new and more com- 

 plex thought. The throwing together of new thoughts somewhat 

 related, yet distinct, excites the creation of more thoughts. So, while 

 improved varieties are a higher basis upon which to build other new 

 varieties, each j)air of varieties which are specialized so as to be very 

 different in character, though related, have within thejn when crossed 

 the inciting causes, the j)Ower of creating entirely new variations. 

 The principles and phj^sical relations or changes of the brain cells 

 involved in the physiological phenomena mentioned are the subject 

 of research as well as the principles and the physical changes of the 

 generative cells in the generative phenomena. The obscurity, if not 



