16 



Seed Wheat. 



To What Extent should Farmers Grade their Seed Wheat? 



These figures just quoted, as the result of averaging fifty-seven samples of manifestly- 

 graded samples of seed-wheat as they came from the farmers' hands at sowing-time, 

 show the extent to which our best farmers consider it advisable to re-clean their seed- 

 wheat with a view to improving its qualities. It would, of course, be easy to go on clean- 

 ing the seed until it was well nigh impossible to further improve its quality as seed, but 

 the question of expense comes in, and at a certain point the cleaning ceases to be pro- 

 fitable. At what point does additional cleaning become a losing operation ? That 



Fig. 21.-Companion illustration 

 to Fig. 22. This should be 

 compared, also, with the 

 illustrations on pag-e 11. 

 Fig. 21 shows in a striking 

 manner the practice of our 

 best wheat-growers. A use- 

 ful comparison may be made 

 with Fig. 14, showing a 

 nearly perfect example of 

 Purple Straw wheat, which 

 is in its natural condition. 



is the critical question. The answer that our best farmers give is this, as derived from 

 eur tables : An ordinary sample of wheat of the varieties most grown in the State may 

 profitably be cleaned until it reaches the condition represented by the figures last quoted, 

 in other words until it reaches the condition shown in Fig. 21 on this page. 



In order that this answer may be made as clear as possible, photographs have been 

 made from a sample so cleaned, and the pictures are presented in a variety of ways, so 

 as to give as accurate an idea as possible of the opinion of our best wheat-growers. 

 See illustrations on this and the succeeding pages. The number of these growers, as I 

 have already pointed out, is from one-fi|th to one-fourth of our total number. Would 



