Improving Plants by Selection or Breeding. 



557 



to be worthless. Shortly after this, when the other ball was practically 

 ripe, and he was expecting to harvest it, he visited the plant and found 

 that this second ball had disappeared. Mr. Burbank, in describing 

 the incident, said that, boy-like, he fell on his knees and searched for 

 the ball, crying over its loss. Every day, for nearly a week after, 

 he visited the location and 

 looked for this lost seed ball. 

 He said that he could not 

 give it up as lost and finally 

 he found it some 15 or 16 

 feet away from the original 

 plant, hidden under another 

 vine, where it had evidently 

 fallen after having been 

 knocked off by some one 

 passing the plant rapidly. 

 He preserved the seed ball, 

 grew the seed the next year, 

 and from among the progeny 

 selected the original plant 

 which gave the Burbank 

 potato. This success stimu- 

 lated him in his early desire 

 to breed plants, and is prob- 

 ably responsible for the 

 great success which he has 

 achieved. 



The writer is acquainted 

 with a. Connecticut boy who 

 has recently started on a 

 career which may equal that 

 of Burbank. Several years 

 ago when a boy of some 16 

 years of age, he obtained 

 some of the select seed of Reed's Yellow Dent corn, a variety which 

 originated in Illinois, and is grown very extensively in that and other 

 corn states of the west. This variety, while a heavy yielder, is too late 

 for Connecticut conditions. However, he grew the corn and each year, 

 selected seed from the earliest progenies, that is, those progenies which 

 produced the largest percentage of ripe ears, and were, at the same 

 time, high yielders. Within a few years he exhibited his corn at the 



Fig. 6.- 



Heads of Gold Coin Wheat showing 



variations in size. 



