1905.] DISCUSSION. 205 



Prof. Britton. Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen : Of 

 course you know that a scientific man cannot do anything but 

 talk shop, and when the secretary asked me to say a few words 

 I thought it might be interesting to say a few things about the 

 occurrence, or absence of insect pests during the past season. 

 Many of you have made observations along those lines, but 

 before starting in I thought I would like to say that I consider 

 this question of plant breeding one of the most promising 

 lines of work for us all to take up, that we can engage in, not 

 only as regards the yield of crops, but also in the larger in- 

 formation which will come to us in regard to plants which 

 will resist the attacks of insects, and of various diseases caused 

 by bacteria and fungi. Perhaps the insects cannot be kept off 

 quite as well as the other thing, but I believe there is a great 

 chance in work along this line for us to increase our ability 

 to keep off certain diseases to plants caused by bacteria and 

 fungi. In fact, at one time I was engaged in some breeding 

 experiments. I worked along lines somewhat different from 

 what a good many do, but along the same lines that Mr. 

 Shamel has indicated. Mr. Shamel has told you about the 

 selection of heavy and light seed of tobacco. We went to a 

 great deal of trouble to select out heavy seed. We began with 

 seed purchased from seedsmen, and the first generation of the 

 plants gave us some very striking results. We got earliness 

 in the crop from light seed, with a heavier yield and a larger 

 growth of leaf and stem from the heavy seed. But after a few 

 generations this difference seemed to disappear somewhat, 

 and there was not so much difference except that the plants 

 from the light seed seemed to mature earlier and gave us a 

 larger weight. Finally we got in diseases. After several 

 generations our results were entirely destroyed from one of 

 those diseases, which we could not combat. Now I fully be- 

 lieve that if we had gone on with it and selected seed from 

 plants which resisted that disease we might finally have 

 reached some very valuable results. As it was we have all 



