Practice of Plant Breeding 



potato is even ioo years old, but there is still the 

 probability that they do begin to grow aged and en- 

 feebled, so that new varieties raised from seed will be 

 required to replace them. 



It is usual in England to get seed tubers from Scot- 

 land ; even in Scotland some growers obtain their seed 

 from high, cold, and late districts. Such seed potatoes 

 are supposed to be more hardy than those raised in 

 England. 



It is possible that the u Fife " wheat which comes 

 from Canada owes some of its splendid qualities to the 

 severe climate conditions under which it originated. 

 The history of this variety is very remarkable ; a 

 Scotchman (David Fife, in Ontario, Canada) obtained 

 some Dantzig wheat from Glasgow. Only three ears, 

 the produce of a single grain, ripened, but the splendid 

 Canadian harvest of 1908(11,375,000 quarters) seems 

 to be almost wholly descended from that one seed. 

 Not only so, but it is this same Fife wheat which is 

 relied upon to save the situation in England. 



It is thought that the Fife wheat is not a Dantzig 

 race, but due to a grain or two of Galician wheat which 

 had got in by accident. 15 



294 



