The Bulletin. 7 



especially qualified, by natural ability and special training, to such 

 work. Yet it does not require any technical knowledge on the part of 

 the farmer to improve corn, for the methods of selection are very simple. 

 If the farmer will follow a few simple directions and use the knowledge 

 that he gets first hand from his growing plants, he can be independent 

 of the seed man and will himself be winning the prizes he now sees going 

 to men who are using in their work only the same knowledge that is at 

 his disposal. 



The corn plant readily adapts itself to its surroundings. When adapt- 

 ing itself to the soil and climatic changes it will necessarily undergo 

 physical changes. This is the reason we have so many varieties of 

 corn. For this reason I would not advise farmers in general to enter 

 into the breeding of corn, because it takes several years to develop and 

 fix a type and then, when the conditions of growth are changed it is very- 

 likely to fail to come up to the standard fixed by the breeder and the 

 result will be that the farmers growing it will lose faith in improved 

 seed corn. I do advise every farmer who is growing corn to plant some 

 standard variety which he knows has been tested and gives the most 

 profitable yields in his locality, and from this to select, each year, seed 

 that comes nearest to his ideal. It is necessary to make this selection 

 each year because if it is not done the corn will soon revert to the orig- 

 inal type and lose those qualities which the farmer has been striving 

 to get. 



Remember, in all of your selection, that it is not one individual qual- 

 ity that makes a variety desirable, but a combination of all the parts. 

 Instead of looking for an ideal ear only, look for an ideal stalk made up 

 of an ideal stem, of ideal foliage, and of an ideal root system, bearing 

 an ideal ear or ears covered by ideal husks, and supported by an ideal 

 shank. Possibly this will be hard to find; but you can find something 

 which approaches it and from this, with your ideal in view, you can 

 select continuously until you have a plant very nearly approaching that 

 ideal. 



Probably you think this will not pay. The Com Club boys think it 

 will pay and are proving it by growing three and four times as much 

 corn per acre as their fathers. 



SEED SELECTION 



Since this is the most important of the two subjects, the selection of 

 com for seed and for exhibition, and since the rules that apply to one 

 apply equally as well to the other, I will go somewhat more fully into 

 the selection for seed rather than into the selection for exhibition. 



THE SELECTION IN THE FIELD. 



In all farm crops it is of great importance that the farmer should 

 have good seed. This truth holds good with com: first, because it is 

 very important that one have a perfect stand from the first planting 

 in order that all the com may mature at the same time and the loss from 

 self pollination may be eliminated to a large extent; second, because it 



