Improved Races After Selection Ceases. 127 



agriculture and horticulture. There is a great deal ul 

 uncertainty as to its meaning; but it probably serves 

 different objects in different places. 



In the best known cases however this process is con- 

 nected with the practice of home growing which we 

 have just been considering. The small farmer and the 

 gardener effect this change by making it a practice not 

 to save seed which they have themselves harvested but to 

 buy pedigree seed afresh. This custom is a very old one. 

 For example Hunting said as long ago as 1671^ that 

 the home-grown seed of cauliflower and savoys gave in- 

 ferior results ; and that seed ought to be procured afresh 

 from Italian sources. Jordan often sowed vegetable 

 seeds with the object of seeing them degenerate, and 

 regularly observed a speedy retrogression to the wild 

 type.^ LiNDLEY states, in his Theory of Horticulture, 

 cited above, tliat prominent seedsmen buy the seeds for 

 the early strains of their annuals from warmer and drier 

 districts. 



RiSLER says on this point'"^ : "If a farmer tries to 

 grow varieties of wheat which do very well elsewhere 

 but are new to him and to his district he is doing the 

 reverse of selection." Varieties are adapted to the soil 

 and to the climate of their original home. If they are 

 introduced in due time we may expect to reap the re- 

 ward of the labor that has been spent in their perfection ; 

 but they will not last indefinitely if the conditions in 

 which they are grown are not at least tolerably similar 

 to those from which they came. 



In 1894, J. H. VAN Mansholt, one of the most 



^ Abraham Munting, Waare Ocffeninge der Planten, p. 319. 

 ' Arbres f rut tiers, 1853, P- 57- 

 " Weisenhau, p. 79. 



