66 AGRICULTURE FOR BEGINNERS 



stock, but slight differences have been emphasized by con- 

 tinued seed selection, until we now have really two varieties 

 of flax, one a heavy seed bearer, the other producing a 

 long fiber. 



You can in a similar way improve your cotton or any 

 other seed crop. Sugar beets have been made by seed 

 selection to produce about double the percentage of sugar 

 that they did a few years ago. It costs too much and is 

 too laborious to prepare and to till land to allow it to be 

 planted with poor seed. The following are the qualities 

 of the parent plant that ought to be sought for in trying 

 by seed selection to improve the yield of the cotton stalk: 

 first, seed should be chosen only from plants that bear 

 many well-filled bolls of long staple cotton; second, seed 

 should be taken from no plant that does not by its healthy 

 condition show hardihood in resisting disease and drought. 



The plan of choosing seeds from selected plants may 

 be applied to wheat; but it would be too time-consuming 

 to select enough single wheat plants to furnish all of the 

 seed wheat for next year. In this case adopt the following 

 plan. In Fig. 52, let A represent the total size of your 

 wheat field, and let B represent a plat large enough to fur- 

 nish seed for the whole field. At harvest time go into 

 section A and select the best plants you can find. Pick 

 the heads of these and thresh them by hand. The seed 

 so obtained must be carefully saved for your next sowing. 



In the fall sow these selected seeds in area B. This area 

 should produce the best wheat. At the next harvest cull 

 not from the whole field but from the finest plants of 

 plat B, and again save these as seed for plat B. Use the 

 unculled seed from plat B to sow your crop. By following 



