LAWS OF INHERITANCE PUT TO USE 27 



Professor R. H. Biffen, of Cambridge, England, was chosen 

 as chief investigator. His first act was to get samples of wheat, 

 each one of which had some especially fine quality. One bore 

 grain on a stout stalk, another had a full head of wheat, another 

 was beardless, another yielded a great amount of grain to the 

 acre, still another could not be injured by the wheat disease 

 called rust that is, it was immune to this particular disease. 



These and other varieties reached Dr. Biffen from different 

 countries, and he kept them strictly apart except as he himself 

 planted and paired them according to the descendants which 

 he wished them to have. He did no guessing about his work ; 

 neither did he wait for haphazard results. He had studied 

 the laws of inheritance, and he knew perfectly well that by 

 selecting ancestors carefully enough, and by keeping cause 

 and effect ever in mind, he could travel a straight road toward 

 his desired end. 



After a fashion he was really forcing a new variety of wheat 

 into existence, and he was so successful that in the course of 

 time he presented the National Association of Millers with 

 precisely what they wished. This new wheat had a strong 

 stalk and a full head of grain kernels. It was rich in gluten 

 and beardless. It could resist all attacks of the dreaded rust, 

 and it yielded large quantities of grain to the acre. Science 

 had helped nature evolve a wheat which satisfied even the 

 clamor of the millers. They pronounced it a great success. 



And what of corn, that other food stand-by ? 



In the state of Washington, in 1912, two fields of corn 

 grew side by side. Each covered ten acres ; each grew in 

 the same kind of soil ; but, strange to say, one of these fields 

 yielded about half as much again as the other. I asked what 

 made the difference, and the farmer who owned the rich 

 field gave a broad smile. 



