IMPROVEMENTS IN WHEATS. 529 



latter attributes is a constitutional fitness or unfitness for the environment 

 in which it may be placed. So powerful in their influence are environment — 

 conditions which without being unsuitable for the growth of wheat are 

 uncongenial to the constitutional characteristics of a variety that some 

 wheats, which M. H. L. Vilmorin received from Tashkend in Turkestan, were 

 so severely affected by rust when they came to be grown in France as after 

 two or three years to refuse to produce seed which would germinate." 



" It is for the purpose of filling the requirements of our different districts 

 that I am not proposing to breed and myself fix varieties in the expectation 

 that the possession by them of all the physical qualities which give to a 

 wheat the power of resisting rust which will cause such varieties to be 

 valuable everywhere. I propose rather to confine myself almost entirely 

 to the breeding which will possess all the physical qualities I have 'already 

 enumerated as being specially resistance-giving, and to send to the different 

 districts of Australia heads produced by plants of the first generation which 

 have been so bred. By following this plan it will be possible for those types 

 to be selected from the produce of such heads, and fixed as varieties within 

 the district itself as may show themselves to possess, associated with all 

 the physical qualities which give resistance to rust that indefinable attribute 

 which we call constitutional fitness for the particular district in which they 

 are fixed." 



I may mention here that some years afterwards, as soon as I 

 could obtain particulars of the recently unearthed Mendelian law 

 of heredity, I sent the information to Mr. Farrer, who, although 

 very much interested in the matter, was prevented, owing to 

 pressure of work, from making any experiments in connection with 

 this law, and hesitated in expressing any decided opinion as to its 

 practical application to the work of making wheats. 



Mr. R. H. Biffin, B.A., of the Agricultural Department, Cam- 

 bridge University, who seems to have been engaged for some time 

 in following in Mr. Farrer's footsteps, to make wheats resistant of 

 rust and of high milhng qualities, appears to consider, according to 

 his article on " Studies in the inheritance of disease resistance "^ 

 that the only certain means of effecting this is by working on 

 Mendelian principles, and in order to emphasise his views, he refers 

 to an article read by Mr. Farrer before this Association on January, 

 10th, 1898, and wrote as follows : — 



" In some countries a careful search has already been made for rust- 

 resistant varieties, but, on the whole, with comparatively little success from 

 the economic point of view. This partial failure has not been due so much 

 to the difficulty of finding relatively immune varieties, as to the difficulty 

 of finding immunity in combination with other features essential for the 

 profitable cultivation of the crop. . . . The researches of the lateWilliam 

 Farrer may be quoted as an example. The problem has proved an excep- 

 ■ tionally difficult one, and even Farrer's patient work has not met with the 

 success one hoped it would. Now, however, we are in the possession of 

 the broad outlines of the inheritance of the more important characteristics 

 of wheat, the attempt to combine in one variety such features as quality, 

 proper time of ripening, cropping power, and so on, together with immunity 

 to the commoner rusts may profitably be made. Such attempts will have 

 to be made in each country where wheat is cultivated ; for wheats suitable 

 for English conditions will certainly find no favour in Canada or Australia, 

 for instance." 



1 Journal of Agricultural Science, Vol. II., part II., 1907. 



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