IMPROVEMENT OF WHEAT 



37 



new climate, wheat shows an unusual tendency to vary, it 

 changes, and if the better yielding plants are crowded out the 

 change results in a lower yield. Virgil 1 mentions selection 

 of seed before the time of Christ, and noticed its advantages. 

 A Scottish agriculturist, Shireff, made discoveries pertaining 

 to the selection of wheat as early as 1819. The Belgian horti- 

 culturist, Van Mons, scientifically practiced selection before 

 1835. The works of Le Couteur, the English breeder, show 

 that selection in wheat was early practiced, but never long 

 continued or repeated. One of the early experiments in selec- 

 tion of wheat was that of Hallett 2 in England, begun in 1857. 

 He selected the best heads and kernels. The following table 

 gives his results. 



EXPERIMENTS IN SELECTION OF WHEAT. 



Thus by means of repeated selection alone, the length of th( 

 ear was doubled, the number of grains per head was nearly 

 trebled, and the tillering power was increased over fivefold. It 

 is only within recent years that wheat experiments of this 

 nature have been carried on in America. The most extensive 

 and successful of these were begun in 1892 at the Minnesota 

 experiment station under the direction of Prof. W. M. Hays. 

 From 1891 to 1896 experiments were made in Kansas with 

 light, common and heavy seed, and seed from selected heads. 

 The light seed uniformly gave a lower yield, but common seed 

 gave the highest yield during three years. 3 At the Minnesota 

 station from 1895 to 1898, No. 169, a wheat selected' on prin- 

 ciples similar to those of Hallett, gave an average yield of 

 28.3 bushels per acre, while during the same years the un- 



1 Georgics I., lines 286-288. 



2 Neb. Bui. 32, p. 91. 



8 Kan. Buls. 20, 33, 40 and 59. 



