28 METHOD OF CULTIVATION. 
the strongest and healthiest plants. Such seeds contain 
the most starch, a substance which undergoes a peculiar 
transformation during germination, and which supplies the 
young plant with food until it has sent out its rootlets and 
leaves. The earliest ripened and heaviest seeds are always 
to be found on the summit or upper half of the panicle; 
and, from such, a selection should in all cases be made, 
rejecting those from the lower half which are often not 
ripened fully, and always imperfectly filled, and which pro- 
duce stunted and ill-developed plants, capable of transmit- 
ting only their own inferior qualities. 
Before planting time, the germinating power of all seeds 
not previously well known, should be tested by placing 
them on moistened blotting-paper or cotton, in a warm 
place, excluded from light, till they sprout. This method 
is better than planting in soil, as the progress of growth 
may be readily noticed, and as different depths of soil va- 
riously influence the result. 
Growth may be hastened by steeping the seed and in 
other ways; but when a system of early planting is prac- 
iced, the use of such means is neither necessary nor de- 
sirable. Yet, in all cases where-delay is unavoidable, the 
most successful mode of preparation is to put the seed in 
a sieve or coarse sack, and pour hot water upon it. It 
may be steeped in the water for twelve hours or more, and 
then rolled in plaster or ashes and planted. 
Various cliemical agents have been employed with the 
object of accelerating germination, by dissolving them in 
the water in which the seed is soaked. The action of 
these substances, however, seems to be most energetic, not 
during germination, but afterward, when the earth in 
which the seed is planted is irrigated with their solutions. 
In the seeds of all plants, the first movement of the 
embryo is determined by its exposure to a certain degree 
