WHAT WE NEED 457 



to adapt the species to these new wants. Those per- 

 sons who are looking for the coming of the perfect, 

 all -round variety, are behind the time, and are con- 

 stantly getting farther behind, for it is more and 

 more impossible to combine all the varied and contra- 

 dictory specific desires of men into one plant form. 

 There must be a best variety for every particular use 

 and locality and soil. The cosmopolitan variety must 

 become more and more restricted in range and useful- 

 ness as time goes on, and as more refined and specific 

 needs arise. People are always saying that we already 

 have too many varieties and the effort is always mak- 

 ing to reduce the number. Even the experimenters 

 in the stations usually conceive it to be a part of 

 their duty to endeavor to reduce the number of varie- 

 ties, but what they are really doing or might be 

 doing is determining the merits of varieties for 

 specific uses. If a given variety does not satisfy 

 the ideal of the experimenter, that fact is no proof 

 that it may not satisfy the ideal of some one else, 

 or that it may not be a positive acquisition in some 

 other place or for some other purpose. We shall 

 always need to test varieties, to be sure, and the 

 testing must be more exact and personal the more 

 critical we become in our demands. It is out of the 

 many new varieties that we shall find the particular 

 ones which we ourselves desire. 



In the second place, we need a greater range of 

 variation, more divergent and widely unlike varieties. 

 These can be had by selecting out of the annually 

 recurring batches of new varieties those which are 

 widest unlike the existing types, providing, of course, 

 they are worthy to be perpetuated. But they can be 



