258 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
in animal breeding as well, greater achievements than heretofore, because 
more people with scientific training are devoting themselves to it. 
Amateurs have done much to bring. forward chance varieties, and 
more recently the hybridising done by amateurs has been of much use in 
the important food plants as well as in ornamentals. But the great work 
of improving our staple field crops and our tree fruits, and even our small 
fruits and vegetables, has not been generally undertaken with that energy 
which their exceeding great importance would warrant, and animal 
breeding is as yet oniy an amateur art, though in some cases a highly 
developed art. 
The hundreds of millions of dollars of value which would annually 
accrue from the addition of a single bushel per acre to the average crops 
of cereal grains, is of such great importance as to justify sufficient experi- 
menting in every country and valley in the world, to secure the best 
varieties of crops, and to improve them so as to still better suit the respec: 
tive local conditions. 
In the practical plans pursued by the various breeders of plants and of 
animals, doubtless most of the important elements of the science of 
breeding are represented. But those principles have not been well 
collected into a literature, and few men have in their individual knowledge 
and practice a comprehensive and working knowledge of the general 
subject, though many have succeeded in their special lines of practice. 
Some of the broader principles have been wrought out by the breeders of 
ornamental plants, and yet others by the breeders of Sugar-Beets and 
other food plants. There are numerous general laws applicable to the 
breeding of all species of plants and of animals; there are other laws 
applicable to plants only, and others to animals only ; and to each species, 
and even to each variety, there are special facts, conditions, or necessities 
in practice which must be recognised. 
The subject as a whole is a fertile soil composed in the main of virgin 
fields ; and while not so difficult to cultivate, it will doubtless endure the 
cropping of many who will here toil in science and in industry. While 
the furtherance of the study of the fundamental science of breeding is of 
the first importance, so much can be done with the present development 
of knowledge that plant breeders need no longer so strongly feel the 
paralysis of ignorance. 
All intelligent effort, long continued, has brought such wonderful 
results in the breeding of flowers that we need not lack faith in improv- 
ing our food plants. 
To illustrate the widely different methods practised in the breeding of 
food plants, a few practical illustrations are in order :— 
1. Sugar-Beets have been subjected to laboratory methods: the fullest 
records have been made, pedigrees have been studied, and used even more 
rigidly than in animal breeding, and many special points and principles 
have been incidentally worked out. 
2. Indian Corn (Maize), on the other hand, being a large plant, with the 
ear large, and always taken in the hand and its size and quality noted by 
the grower, has been profoundly improved by the American farmers. 
They have greatly increased the yield and improved the quality of dent 
corn in the original home of dent corn, the Southern States; and they 
