98 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



varieties of cattle ; and a method of immensely increas- 

 ing the crop from each grain and from a given area, by 

 planting each seed separately and wide apart, so as to 

 have room for the full development of the young plant, 

 which is usually suffocated by its neighbours in our 

 corn-fields.* 



The double character of Major Hallett's method 

 the breeding of new prolific varieties, and the method 

 of culture by planting the seeds wide apart seems, 

 however, so far as I am entitled to judge, to have 

 been overlooked until quite lately. The method was 

 mostly judged upon its results ; and when a farmer had 

 experimented upon " Hallett's Wheat," and found out 

 that it was late in ripening in his own locality, or gave 

 a less perfect grain than some other variety, he usually 

 did not care more about the method! However, Major 

 Hallett's successes or non-successes in breeding such 

 or such varieties are quite distinct from what is to be 

 said about the method itself of selection, or the method 

 ,of planting wheat seeds wide apart. Varieties which 

 were bred on the windy downs of Brighton may be, or 

 ,may not be, suitable to this or that locality. Latest 

 physiological researches give such an importance to 

 evaporation in the bringing of cereals to maturity that 

 where evaporation is not so rapid as it is on the Brigh- 

 ton Downs, other varieties must be resorted to and bred 

 on purpose.J I should also suggest that quite different 



* It appears from mkny different experiments (mentioned in Prof. 

 Garola's excellent work, Les Cereales, Paris, 1892) that when tested seeds 

 (of which no more than 6 per cent, are lost on sowing) are sown broad- 

 cast, to the amount of 500 seeds per square metre (a little more than one 

 square yard), only 148 of them give plants. Each plant gives in such 

 case from two to four stems and from two to four ears ; but nearly 360 

 seeds are entirely lost. When sown in rows, the loss is not so great, but 

 it is still considerable. 



f See Prof. Garola's remarks on " Hallett's Wheat," which, by the 

 way, seem to be well known to farmers in France and Germany (Les 

 Cereales, p. 337). 



J Besides, Hallett's wheat must not be sown later than the first week 

 of September. Those who may try experiments with planted wheat 

 must be especially careful to make the experiments in open fields, not in 

 a back garden, and to sow early. 



