IMPROVEMENT OF VARIETIES. 69 



" The principle of selection," says the editor of the 

 London Field, " so successfully carried out among 

 cattle and sheep, has of late been applied to the vege- 

 table kingdom, and soon the various kinds of seeds bid 

 fair to exhibit those qualities of superiority which can 

 alone be produced by careful and continuous discrim- 

 ination In adopting selection, a great principle 



has thus been evolved, and one manifest advantage is 

 that it is open to every agriculturist, without any ad- 

 ditional expense to carry out the plan for himself." 



Mr. Hallet, of Brighton, has applied this principle 

 with great success to his wheat crop, and has been 

 able by that means to more than double the size of 

 the original ears. " It has been," he observes, " the 

 great leading idea of my life, that the starting with 

 an accidentally large ear is a very different thing from 

 starting with a similar ear, the result of descent, or 

 pedigree. Take the case of two heifers identical in 

 every respect but pedigree the one what she is by 

 accident, the other by design. From the former you 

 may get any imaginable kind of progeny, from the 

 latter only a good kind. In other words, you have 

 fixity of type ; and the good qualities gain the force, 

 as it were, of impetus by continual accumulation." 



It is satisfactory to know that American farmers 

 are neither indifferent nor inactive on this subject. 

 Already marked improvements have been effected by 

 this means in some of the varieties of Indian corn. 

 The Baden variety, so named from its originator, is a 

 striking illustration of this principle. It was produced 

 from the White Gourd-seed, by Thomas N". Baden, of 



