A Lost Opportunity in Bee Breeding 
The following answer was given to an 
inquiry about breeding bees for greater 
length of tongue, so that they could 
pasture on red clover, which is ordinarily 
visited only by bumble-bees: 
“Some ten years ago we discovered 
that we had one colony of bees that 
would work on red clover when it was 
in full bloom when all the other bees 
apparently were doing nothing. An in- 
vestigation showed that the tongues of 
bees of this particular colony were con- 
siderably longer than the tongues of 
ordinarily normal bees. The tongue 
reach of the ordinary bee is between 
16/100 and 17/100 of an inch long, 
while the tongue reach of these red 
clover bees we found to be 23/100 and 
24/100 of an inch. Not much wonder 
47 
gather honey from red clover, which has 
very deep corolla tubes, when the other 
bees could not reach the nectar. We 
entered into some correspondence with 
the experiment station, suggesting that 
if they could shorten the length of the 
corolla tubes of red clover by careful 
selection we would make an effort on 
the other hand to increase the tongue 
length of our ordinary hive bees. But 
the effort on our part did not succeed 
for the simple reason that bees find 
their mates in the air and we could not 
control the male parentage. The result 
was that this particular sport of bees 
degenerated back to the original normal 
stock. This is as far as we have ever 
been able to go, and it was merely an 
accident that we secured bees of this 
tongue reach.” 
then, that these bees were able to E. R. Root, Medina, Ohio. 
Food Plants of American Indians 
A new and interesting development of American horticulture is the study of 
crops grown by the American Indians. They have yielded some races of great 
value, among which one of the best known is the Tepary bean, exploited by the 
Arizona Experiment Station. This is highly drought-resistant; the present races 
are found to be much mixed, however, and are now undergoing selection, for the 
isolation of pure strains. In a similar way, a new variety of sweet corn has been 
isolated from a mixed lot of ears furnished by the Papago Indians, and is being 
submitted to careful treatment, which in four years has resulted in doubling the 
average size of the ear and increasing the yield. This variety promises to be of 
much value in semi-arid climates. 
Eugenics on the Farm 
Eugenics is given the first place in the declaration of principles of the Farmers’ 
National Congress, written by Secretary O. D. Hill. It is declared to be the 
“paramount question of the century.’ “‘The American farmer, as a rule, takes 
great pride in improving his live stock,” Mr. Hill says, “but never once seeks to 
improve the coming generations of his own household.” It is urged that this 
question be kept constantly in the foreground, until it beccmes a fixed principle of 
government. 
Tobacco Hybridization — 
Careful analysis of tobacco hybrids, from a purely genetic point of view, is 
being made at the University of California; one of the objects is to find just how 
hybrids can be “‘fixed”’ to breed true. The tabulation of more than 10,000 measure- 
ments in the study of flower size furnishes as large a mass of data upon the inherit- 
ance of a quantitative character in plant hybrids as has been reported in genetics 
literature up to the present time. 
