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disadvantage compared -with, say, cattle in carrying this out t A 

 cow, for instance, produces one calf at a time. A grain of wheat 

 2>lanted suitabhj will produce at harvest several thousands of 

 grains. If all these grains are of exactly equal powers there is 

 no advantage in this, but if they differ, then what a choice have 

 Ave in each generation compared with that afforded by the single 

 progeny of a mare, cow, or ewe. That they do differ became at 

 once apparent upon the very first trial ; indeed the produce of no 

 two of them seemed exactly alike. 



How then is the grain of superior productive power to be 

 ascertained 1 Does it depend upon its situation in the ear 1 It 

 was suggested in ancient times that the best grains lay in the 

 middle of the ear. And this is the only instance of any difference 

 between the (/rains of the same ear having ever been even suggested 

 l)efore my own experiments. Mr. Darwin, in his book " On 

 Animals and Plants under Domestication," under " Cerealia," 

 chapter ix., page 314, says : — 



"As wheat is an annual, we thus see many trifling dif- 

 ferences in character are inherited tlirough many generations. 

 Colonel Le Couteur insists strongly on the same fact in his 

 persevering and successful attempts to raise new varieties by 

 selection. He began by choosing the best ears, but soon found 

 that the grains from the same ear differed, so that he was com- 

 pelled to select them separately, and each grain generally trans- 

 mitted its own character. 



In a pai)er, which I had the honour to read before the 

 British Association, at Exeter, 1869, I said that if Mr. Darwin 

 really meant by this what the words imply, that Colonel Le 

 Couteur grew separately, and in competition with each other, the 

 grains from the same ear, and similarly the progeny of each 

 generation after generation (as he must have done to find that 

 each grain of the original transmitted its OAvn character through 

 many generations) and, in fact, that he had discovered that the 

 grains of the same ear differed, it was attributing to Le Couteur • 



