CORN GROWERS ASSOCIATION. 65 



the corn breeder is to establish the breeding block. Next he must make 

 his selection of ears. Let us take, for instance, a man who has deter- 

 mined to make his life-work corn breeding ; he has mapped that out for 

 himself ; he has only one place to start, and that is at the beginning. He 

 has to make his selection of mother ears. He selects them to the best of 

 his knowledge; say he selects loo of them. He next plants them in 

 rows in his breeding block, of say, three to five acres in extent, each row 

 representing a mother ear. He knows the rows and he knows the ears, 

 and he sets them down in his record. Ear No. i is planted in Row No. 

 I, and so on. He makes as complete a record of this mother ear as he 

 can. There are a great many things he could say about her that are 

 needless. What he is after is what that ear is going to do in the way 

 of yield, not what it looks like so much, only as a reference when he is 

 selecting the progeny from that ear. Well, he plants his loo ears, and 

 during the season of growth he must take notes as to germination. He 

 must know the germination. Let me impress this on you — (all the corn 

 breeders here know it, but there may be some laymen among you) — 

 that weakness and strength are just as inherent in corn as they are 

 in live stock. Poor germination is inherent. Germination is not af- 

 fected so much by its inheritance as it is by poor curing, or poor storage, 

 but it is inherent, and he must take into account the germination that 

 every mother row makes. He must take into account the growth of 

 that mother ear, the growth of that whole row. He must take notes all 

 during the growing season as to its vigor of growth, as to its amount of 

 foliage, as to its standing ability, as to the placement of the ears ; in 

 short, all characteristics that he cannot get at the harvest time. He 

 must have every mother ear on the same amount of ground ; now that's 

 a hard thing to do. He must make his rows of equal length, and must 

 ascertain at harvest time the amount of ground taken up by each mother 

 ear. He must count his stalks and his hills and ears. He must 

 weigh his entire row, and then he will find corn production per stalk 

 and average weight of ear ; they are two different things. He can com- 

 pute from these the approximate yield per acre that each mother ear 

 makes. That must be his basis for selection the first year, taking the 

 other items into consideration that I have spoken of. From this row 

 that proves to be the grand champion of the block, and from several 

 other rows, say eight or ten, that are the highest yielders in the block 

 (we may call them the eight or ten champion rows), rows that have 

 made the tests and are qualified for champions, he must select his breed- 

 ing ears for the next year. He plants these again in his breeding block. 

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