THE BEE-KEEPERS* REVIEW 



295 



part of it f perhaps all the encouragement 

 vou'll get I. I'ield clo\ers vary greatly — 

 vary in the line of being lots of long- 

 tubed ones, and also vary in the line of 

 there being few and rare specimens, which 

 can be found by long hunting, much 

 more hopeful than the easy-found ones. 

 Work. C is the slow and tedious work of 

 raising seedlings year after year, and 

 kt'epius^ them /yo»t backsliiiiiio, as they 

 will probably disgust you by doing, and 

 slowly, with careful selection, getting a 

 little shorter and shorter as the years go 

 l)y. It was this work that tired me out. 

 It is going to take a great many years. 

 I'ive years, or ten years will be only a 

 "circumstance" in it. Still, perhaps it's 

 best not to give it up, even if like 



Freedom'.'; battle, once begun. 

 Bequeathed fron> bleeding sire to son. 



It is necessary- to keep in mind the fact 

 that the time of year, amount of fertility 

 in the soil, vigor of growth, drouth or 

 the opposite, and various other things 

 considerably affect the tube-lengths of 

 the same plant. On these accounts we 

 often seem to be gaining when we are 

 not. And it might be that we would 

 seem to be losing when we were really 

 gaining. Practically, after three or four 

 vears of effort you will probably feel very 

 much befogged as to whether you have 

 really gained any thing or not. 



Work C is a sort of diamond-hunting 

 work. Most plants, besides their capac- 

 ity for gradual change, show from time 

 to time sudden and great changes in a 

 particular seedling or a particular bud. 

 These almost startling manifestations are 

 called "sports." If the desired bee-clover 

 arrives during the present generation it 

 will be by finding and rendering perma- 

 nent one of these sports. During the 

 years I was in the work i found two 

 sports, or plants, which I called such. 

 One of them I lost my grip of so com- 

 pletely that I have nothing to show for it 

 — couldn't be sure that it would ever 

 have filled the bill any way. The other 

 one seemed to be pretty much all one 

 could ask, gained at one leap — but with 

 one lamentable shnrlcoming. It was 

 about as near to being seedless as a plant 

 could be without being absolutely so. I 

 never had a dozen seeds at one time. To 

 have even one plant in bloom, when a 

 friend called ancl I wanted to show him 

 my prize — why, I considered myself lucky. 

 A package in my clover-drawer says on 

 the outside, "Three seeds 1897;" alas! 

 too old to grow now, I fear — and that is 

 all I have to show for years of effort with 

 that incipient variety. Since the first 



few years, the most hope of success which 

 I have been able to cherish has been that, 

 with long practice, a plant might appear 

 in this succession which would have 

 flowers as open to the bee as the parent 

 flowers have been, and also seeds like 

 those a civilized clover ought to have. 

 Perhaps when the weather gets a little 

 cooler I'll try those three seeds for all 

 the}' are worth. 



There is also a sport which frequently 

 appears in red clover, having white seeds 

 and pure-white blossoms. I made easy 

 progress in breeding these down to a fixed 

 variety; but had I kept on to completion 

 it would have been of the same use as 

 stripes around our bee's tails, no use at 

 all — tubes no shorter th.tn ordinary reds. 



But in fussing with the white sports I 

 think I made a discovery which perhaps 

 ought to be understood and considered 

 by all those who work in such work as ' 

 this. It is, that progress tends not to go 

 on regularly with each generation, but by 

 xftgnXar alternation of generations. A little 

 hard to describe this so a reader will 

 catch on readih'. Siy you are trying to 

 get a white variety from a white sport. 

 First generation you raise loo seedlings, 

 and say 3 of them are white and 97 back- 

 slidden and red. (Think you have got a 

 tough job before you.) Second genera- 

 tion, 100 seedlings turn out "^o white and 

 onlv 50 backsliders. (Think you are 

 getting on swimmingly.) Third genera- 

 tiou you find r5 white to 85 backsliders. 

 ( Half inclined to give the thing up as im- 

 possible. ) Fourth generation, however, 

 pans out 55 white to 45 reds. And so it 

 goes on, with regular oscillation back 

 and fourth with each generation, but on 

 the whole manifestly getting ahead. I 

 have come to feel that something like 

 this affects laearly all work of the kind 

 with seedlings." 



The very fact that plants and animals 

 are so prone to revert to the original is 

 most encouraging. This very stability is 

 our hope. If we once succeed by many 

 years of patient work in gstting a short 

 tubed clover, there is some prospect that 

 we may be able to keep it. If the plant 

 were likely to dodge off this way and 

 that every year, we would never be able 

 to establish any particular strain. The 

 more difficult it is to get a plant to change 

 its habit, the more permanent will be the 

 change when it is secured. At present, 

 I think this a more hopeful end of thg 



