46 Seed Wheat. 



so good as the former. Some people are cheerfully willing under such circumstances to 

 make comparisons, regardless of the difference in soil, cultivation, rainfall, &c., and may 

 come to the wrong conclusion that the poor seed is responsible for the superiority of the 

 better crop. 



If a wheat-grower reaps a paying crop from small seed he has in the course of ordinary 

 farming no means of knowing how much better the crop would have been if the seed 

 had been larger ; and on the other hand, if he reaps only a poor crop from good large 

 plump seed, he again has no means of knowing how much poorer the crop would have 

 been if the seed had been poor and small. In the absence of this knowledge, he is not 

 unlikely to come to a wrong conclusion as to the relative values of large plump and 

 small shrivelled seed. There are two ways in which this baleful uncertainty may be 

 dissipated either through faith in the experience and advice of those who have studied 

 the matter long and carefully, or by arriving at the truth through individual experiment. 

 The second course is one that I would unhesitatingly recommend, if there exists the 

 slightest doubt under the first head. The cost of the experiment is so trifling, and the 

 result so convincing, that I venture to think that after three or four years of experiment, 

 there will no longer be room for doubt as to the truth. Let any doubter who is inclined 

 to the use of small or shrivelled seed, repeat each year a singfe experiment of the sort 

 pictured in Fig. 27, p. 148, selecting the seed by hand, according to the sizes shown in 

 Fig. 31, or anyone of the other similar figures in this report. The experiment need not 

 cost him more than a few shillings each year. One hundred to two hundred seeds of 

 each size is sufficient. At an entire cost of 30s. to 40s., spread over several years, he 

 may acquire that faith in the good qualities of large plump grains as seed that will have 

 a permanent value to him a hundredfold greater than the cost of the experiment. 



On some soils naturally unsuitable to wheat the growth is too rank for the production 

 of good crops of grain. Under such circumstances, the yield of grain from the stunted 

 plants derived from shrivelled seed may be greater than that from larger and better seed ; 

 but this applies to grain alone, and not to the actual marketable yield of product. In 

 such cases, even, it must not be forgotten that very thin sowing of good seed gives as 

 good results as any plan if proper methods of culture are followed. 



It may be that field trials of large and small seed sown side by side in the most careful 

 manner will give results favouring the poor seed. Such puzzling instances may be seen 

 among the tables of comparisons presented in the foregoing pages. These results only 

 serve to show how little we know of the actual conditions of our soils. Instead of the extra 

 yield from the poor seed being due to the seed, it is due to other factors in the experiment, 

 as is most conclusively proved by the repetition of the experiment year after year, 

 when it will be found that, in the vast majority of cases, the larger and plumper the seed, 

 the better the yield. 



These various considerations seem to me to account for whatever vogue has been 

 secured by this tale of the good qualities of small and pinched seed. 



It has been before remarked, but may be here repeated, that the trials upon which we 

 base the present discussion were carried out on lands similar in character to large areas 

 of this State where wheat is grown, and though one should be cautious in making such 

 statements, I think it safe to say that the results here set down would have been similar 

 if carried out on typical wheat land almost anywhere in the Riverina, or in those parts 

 of the west where wheat is successfully grown. I feel all the more sure of this because 

 the trials were continued through five years of widely varying character, varying from 

 that of 1894-5, one of the best ever known in the Wagga district, to that of 1897-8, one of 

 the worst ever experienced on the Wagga Farm, the drought being so bad that year that 

 some of the gum trees on the Sister Hills died from dryness an almost unprecedented 

 occurrence. Again, the trials were carried out on newly cleared land ; on land that had 

 been cleared one, two, or three years ; on* "green " land ; on fallowed land ; on land in 

 rotation. The land, too, though coming under the general descriptive terms, typical 

 Riverina wheat land, was of a somewhat varying character, being in some of the trials 

 composed of more decomposed granite than in others. 



The results of the trials have left no room for doubt as to the superiority of large, plump 

 seed under all these conditions. If the small and shrivelled seed have, in a few instances, 

 yielded more than the larger seed, it has always been evident that it would be the height 

 of folly to attribute the fact to the small or shrivelled character of the seed. The superior 

 yield of the small seed in these exceptional cases was due to unknown factors in the soil, 

 and I have no doubt this would also account for most, if not all, of the alleged successes 

 of small and shrivelled seed. 



