The Choice of Seeds in Selection. 



333 



tions can only give the best possible result when they 

 are combined with the highest germinal capacity. 



For this reason in agricultural practice and occasion- 

 ally also in horticulture special attention is often paid 

 to the individual seed. The points to which attention is 

 paid are, on the one hand, the size and weight of the 

 individual seeds and, on the other, the place of their 

 origin on the parent plant. The practice of selection in 

 cereals consists essentiallv in the choice of the larjjest and 

 heaviest seeds, or more 

 strictly, in the elimina- 

 tion of the smaller ones by 

 winnowing machines or 

 other devices.^ When the 

 object is to produce small 

 families to serve as the 

 stocks of new races, meas- 

 urement and weig-hin"- of 

 the individual seeds is rec- 

 ommended by the best 

 authorities, and special 

 trays for determiningtheir 





A 



ff 



weight have been devised.- 



Fig. 62. Clumps of fruits of the 

 sugar beet ; half schematic. A, 

 two ripe chnnps on a stem ; B, one 

 of these cut longitudinally show- 

 ing the three seeds in the three 

 special fruits.^ 



An important advance 

 in the method of selection 

 has been made in recent years by Van de Velde who 



^ See Von Rumker, Getreidccuclifung, 1889, and Von Rumker, 

 Dcr wirthschaftliche Mchnvcrth gutcr Culturvarictiitcu unci ausgc- 

 Icsenen Saatgutes, Arbeiten der D. Landw. Gesellsch., 1898. Pt. '36, 

 p. 127. 



"VoN RiJMKER, Joiirn. fiir Landwirthschaft, 39. Jahrg., Pt. 2, 

 p. 129. 



^The specimens from which this drawing was made T owe to 

 the kindness of Messrs. Kuhn & Co., beet seedsmen in Naarden, 

 Holland. They were taken from selected beets of the very high 



