Seed Wheat. 



value of a bushel of small grain is about as great as that of a bushel of large grain. This 

 from experimental grounds. If we turn to market values, we find chick-wheat often quoted 

 only a fraction lower than good milling wheat. 



The argument for small seed, based on the extra number of seeds per bushel, is capable 

 of reversal. Suppose we say that although the bushel of large wheat contains a smaller 

 number of grains, still the grains are larger, and will produce better plants. As a bare 

 statement, that is just as strong as the one of which it is a reversal. 



It may be asked in respect to the assertion that the bushel of small seed produces 

 more plants, if the object is to secure more plants, what is the objection to securing 

 this number by the use of a larger amount of good seed, thus covering the ground with 

 the necessary number of plants, which in this case \vill be of the very best character 

 instead of the starvelings due to the use of small seed ? 



The grading of seed is almost wholly neglected by farmers in some of the newer of the great 

 agricultural countries, and this very fact is one that is sometimes pointed out in defence of 

 not grading the seed. I have heard it said, in substance, by a well-known teacher of 

 agriculture a man whose word is respectfully listened to by thousands of farmers that 

 there could not be much in using graded seed, or farmers would not so generally neglect 

 the matter. Add to this that one may find, in almost any farmers' meeting of any size, 

 advocates of small and pinched seed, and we have, indeed, a strange state of affairs. 

 One might pertinently ask this teacher of agriculture how, if a practice is to be its own 

 sufficient defence, any improvement is ever to take place, and inquire of the advocates 

 of pinched seed why Dame Nature does not provide all her plants with pinched and puny 

 seed, if they are so much better. 



The truth is that, other things being equal, plump seed is much better than shrivelled 

 seed, and that where the results obtained from shrivelled seed are better than those 

 obtained from plump seed, the result is due to other factors than the quality of the seed. A 

 farmer some day sows some badly-pinched seed and reaps from it a good crop, and, possibly, 

 concludes that pinched seed is as good as any, either unaware or forgetting to note that 

 the conditions have been such that almost anything would have grown well. He may 



3'25 3-00 2'75 2'50 2'25 2'00 Tailing's. 



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Fig. 37. Fig. 38. Fig. 39. Fig. 40. Fig. 41. Fig. 42. Fig. 43. 



Figures showing the size of the grains belonging to each grade yielded by the sieves shown in 

 Figures 23 to 28. The proper grade numbers are placed above each illustration. 



even sow plump seed in the same season, and get a poorer harvest from it than from the 

 shrivelled seed, and in this case feel highly fortified in his good opinion of pinched seed. 

 The mistake he makes is in attributing his result to the one obvious difference of seed, 

 entirely forgetting a score of other things that would help to account for the difference 

 in result. Anyone who will take a sample of seed and grade it, as shown in the illustration 

 above, and sow the same in drills side by side, can easily convince himself that the produce of 

 a wheat plant depends in a marked degree upon the size of the seed from which it springs. 

 The plants from grade 200, for example, will be much inferior to those from grade 325. 



It may be asked if the yield from large plump seed is always greater than from small 

 and shrivelled seed, how the contrary idea ever came to have any circulation whatever, 

 but we have to remember that any paradoxical sounding statement may be easily put 

 into circulation if it be gravely and plausibly made. Newspapers and other publications 

 furnish abundant examples of this fact ; and it is unnecessary to go into reasons for the 

 fact. 



It sometimes happens that a good crop is secured from poor seed. In such cases 

 good seed would have given a still better crop, but this fact is overlooked. Sometimes 

 these good crops from poor seed are alongside crops from good seed, and the latter are not 



