320 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



a chemical tesl as high as one per cent, in different crops with the 

 same seed. 



PROF. MENGES: On the same soil? 



A Member: Not exactly, but the relative crop is about the same; 

 about ninety bushels in each case per acre. 



PROF. MENGES: When I started out yesterday, I said that you 

 should select a variety of corn from the corn that has been produced 

 in your soil and your climate, and that is a great consideration; the 

 soil and climate certainly have a great deal to do with it. Now if you 

 have a corn that is grown in your soil and your climate, and there 

 are ears on that corn that have increased the amount of protein that 

 corn has adapted itself to those conditions, and then the hereditary 

 tendency is adopted and consequently you can expect from that 

 corn, in all probability, an increase of the protein. 



I won't say that this is so. These things are in an elementary 

 stage of development, and it will not do for a man to get up here 

 and make positive assertions. If you have a high protein corn over 

 in Illinois, and bring that over into Pennsylvania, expecting that 

 it will produce the same thing here, you may be disappointed. No 

 one can say positively that it will produce high protein corn in Penn- 

 sylvania, and why not? Why, because you have changed the con- 

 ditions entirely. 



MR. TEMPLE : We have here with us Mr. Henry Forsythe, one of 

 our neighbors, who was glad to have had the privilege of opening this 

 session. We should be glad if the chairman could grant to him a 

 few moments. 



MR. FORSYTHE: Mr. Chairman, I havn't anything very special 

 to say in this matter except that T have been following the selec- 

 tion and breeding of corn to some extent for twenty years. I feel 

 that not only is corn influenced by a particular soil, but in this sec- 

 tion, our soil changes with a difference of only a few miles. In this 

 particular case, which I raised the question about, it was the same 

 corn subject to the same selection, and it had been about ten years 

 on that soil, and in the other case about five years on the other soil. 

 Originally it was the same, selected by the same party, and under 

 the same relative conditions, and a crop almost the same, conse- 

 quently it seemed to me the climatic condition had no weight in this 

 particular case. Wouldn't that be so? 



PROF. MENGES : I am not prepared to say yes or no. I suppose 

 that there are conditions such as you have described that cannot be 

 attributed to anything definite because we don't know anything defi- 

 nite. 



