The Indian Corn Crop 175 



each fruit or grain on the general receptacle may have had 

 a different male parent, and from its male parent may 

 inherit very different tendencies. 



And right here is where the popular score-card selection 

 fails. The student is instructed to select ears of a par- 

 ticular shape, grains of a particular shape, and cob of a 

 certain character, all making up what is considered an 

 ideal ear. But there is no certainty that these ideal ears 

 will reproduce similar ones, since, as we have said, every 

 grain on the ear may have inherited different tendencies 

 from its male parent. The essential thing, therefore, in 

 the effort to improve the corn plant, is to start with the 

 true imit of improvement, the grain, and to regard each 

 grain as an individual, and endeavor to make the envi- 

 ronment such that all the grains of the ears will inherit 

 the same or similar tendencies. 



What the farmer should want in any breeding of seed 

 is the increase of his crop per acre. He wants bushels of 

 com per acre rather than pretty ears and fewer bushels, 

 and mere selection by score card will never advance him 

 much. Then, too, in the breeding of any plant the paying 

 of attention to one feature of the plant is not true breeding. 

 It is Uke some of the fads that stock breeders have at times 

 been carried away with, such as breeding animals to a 

 particular color without regard to the quaHties that make 

 them valuable for either dairy or beef purposes. The 

 breeder often got the color but with inferior traits for the 

 purpose for which he is raising stock. 



So, also, in breeding grain. If we take the ear of com 

 as the sole object of our attention, we may succeed in get- 

 ting a very uniformly fine ear but on a plant illy adapted 



