BREEDING FOR INTRINSIC QUALITY. 



59 



dom from insects, the land for the field crop nursery is summer fallowed the 

 previous year, where practicable to do so. An effective machine has been 

 devised for this planting. It rests on planks lying in the alleys on either side 

 of the bed. One man sits on the machine and drops into each of fourteen 

 cups one or two seeds. He then throws the frame carrying the cups over and 

 the seeds fall down fourteen tubes, each of which extends into the soil to a 

 uniform depth of two to three inches. A second man with a lever throws the 

 machine forward four inches, and as tlie seeding tubes are four inches apart 

 the hills are in squares, each plant having sixteen square inches of soil room. 

 Before the plants have begun to stool the beds are carefully gone over, and 

 only one plant is left in a hill. 



When ripe the poorer plants are cut off with sheep shears, leaving about 

 500 of those of each variety, or 2,500 in all, which appear to be the heaviest 

 yielders. The bunch of several spikes of each of these plants is put into a 

 separate packet, properly numbered, and taken to the laboratory and weighed 

 in the chaff. One hundred of each variety, 500 plants in all, which weigh 

 heavy, are shelled and inspected as to quality. Two hundred or more of 

 those yielding the highest value per plant are chosen, and the second year 

 100 of the best seeds are planted from each of the 200 mother plants. Two 

 border rows are planted about each plot, and these are removed before har- 

 vest. At harvest time ten superior spikes are saved from as many superior 

 plants in each plot, and the seeds from these are saved to plant a similar 

 plot the third year from each stock or variety from the 200 mother plants, 

 respectively. There are usually a few blank hills, and it is necessary to 

 count the plants as harvested. Shears with automatic counting attachment 

 are here needed to facilitate the work and to make the counting more accu- 

 rate. The grain is tied into a bundle, the heads of which are wrapped in 

 muslin to prevent loss from sparrows, etc., and the bundles are tied to stakes 

 to dry. The bundles are threshed in especially arranged machinery, which 

 does not lose nor mix the grain. After adding the weights of the bulk grain 

 and that shelled from the ten spikes chosen for seed the total is divided by 

 the number of plants, thus giving the yield in grains per plant of the progeny 

 of the 200 mother plants. By using the seeds from the ten spikes a similar 

 test is made the third year, and in like manner a test is sometimes made the 

 fourth year. The averages between the yields of the average plants for the 

 two or three years give pretty good indexes to the power of the blood of 

 each of the mother plants to produce heavy yielding progeny under condi- 

 tions nearly like those met by the wheat plants in the fields. In other words, 

 we thus secure a good measure of the "projected efficiency," or breeding 

 power, of each of the 200 mother plants. The seeds of each of the fifty best 

 of the 200 stocks may now be separately planted in field plots, making fifty 

 varieties ; or, five, more or less, of the plants very similar in appearance may 

 be mixed together, thus greatly reducing the number of varieties. These are 

 grown the fifth year in increase plots, so as to secure sufficient seeds for 

 plots of one-tenth or one^twentieth of an acre in area. The sixth, seventh 

 and eighth years the fifty varieties are grown beside their parent varieties and 

 other standard kinds in field test plots. Sufficient superior stocks are hand- 

 picked out of each plot to furnish seed for planting the plot the next year, 



