GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 503 « 



every kind are known to all, and it may be just cause for surprise that the 

 most important growth of temperate climates, the cereals, or wheat, rye, barley, 

 oats, maize, and the grasses generally, should have shared to but a limited 

 extent in these improvements. 



That cross-fecundation and hybridization are possible has been fully proved 

 by the results of experiments made by Maund and Raynbird, whose "Hybrid 

 Cerealia" received the prize medals at the industrial exhibition in London in 

 1851 ; and that success has attended judicious efforts to improve upon the 

 ordinary wheat by continued careful selection of seed, is evident from the 

 product of the "Giant wheat" and "Pedigree wheat," grown by F. F. Hallett, 

 of Brighton, England. By selecting from year to year not only the best heads 

 of wheat, but the best kernels of the finest ears, and using them for seed, this 

 gentleman has produced a variety possessing great fecundity of grain, extraor- 

 dinary strength of stem, and uniformity in the size of the ear. Some of the 

 heads of these new varieties measured seven inches in length, and were pro- 

 portionably thick. In some instances one kernel has produced seventy-two 

 heads, containing six thousand four hundred and eighty grains, and a maxi- 

 mum product was obtained of sixty and sixty-two, and in one instance seventy- 

 two bushels per acre. The highest results on the farm of Mr. Hallett were 

 six quarters or fifty-six bushels per acre, which appears to have been produced, 

 not upon a chosen garden spot, but upon several acres. The large numbers 

 named above need not excite surprise or doubt of their probability, since Schuyler 

 county, Illinois, has produced wheat heads six and a half inches long, and 

 Talbot county, Maryland, has exhibited a field of nearly thirty acres which in 

 1860 yielded very nearly fifty-five bushels of wheat of sixty pounds, each, to 

 the acre, and nine of which produced sixty -four and a half bushels upon each 

 ax^re. This last was a smooth-headed wheat brought from North Carolina a 

 few years before. William Hotchkiss, of Niagara county. New York, exhib- 

 ted, at the industrial exhibition in London in 1851, the product of six acres in 

 1849-'50 which averaged sixty-three and a half bushels to the acre, weighing 

 sixty-three pounds to the bushel. This extraordinary yield was, however, 

 exceeded in the summer of 1853 by Thomas Powell, of the same county, 

 whose field of seven measured acres averaged within a small fraction of seventy 

 bushels to the acre — namely, four hundred and eighty -nine bushels of wheat. — 

 (See the report of Heman Powers, of Lewiston, New York, in the Patent Office 

 Report, agricultural division, for 1853.) 



Mr. Hallett describes the system by which he produced his "Pedigree wheat" 

 as follows : 



"The best plant is called ' the selection ' of the year (say 1861) in which it is thus obtained, 

 and consists of numerous ears containing many hundreds, and even thousands, of grains, 

 which are planted separately, those of each ear being kept quite distinct, as, although the 

 best grain of any plant is nearly always found to lie in its best ear, it may be otherwise, and 

 the successive parent ears must be preserved. At tke following harvest (1862) the best plant 

 forms 'the selection of 1862,' and its produce is continued on the experimental ground, while 

 that of the remaining plants furnishes the annual seed for the farm in the autumn of 1862, and 

 the crops are in 1863 ofiered to the public. Thus the selection sold is that of 1861, or in any 

 year that of two years before ; the latest selection, that of the year immediately preceding, is 

 not sold, being solely employed as the home seed." 



The extraordinary improvement induced by Mr. Hallett it is not to be ex- , 

 pected would continue to be maintained for many seasons under ordinary field 

 treatment. It is also charged against his wheat that in so far as he has been 

 Buccessful, it has been in fixing the excessive coarseness which their seeding < 

 tends to produce, and that his system has not only faUed to improve, but has 

 produced great deterioration. This is the opinion of a practical writer and 

 farmer who may have over-estimated this deterioration, as we observe an im- 

 proved wheat highly lauded and a competitor for public favor which Ibears the 

 name of the practical farmer above referred to. That there is, however, ground 



