78 SUGAR-BEET SEED 



of each little beet-ball had to be examined minutely. 

 From between 400,000 and 500,000 beet-balls 

 4000 singles were secured, the exact proportion 

 of singles being 0.98 of one per cent, of the balls 

 examined. 



The writer had reasoned that because of the fact 

 that the ball which enclosed a single was more than 

 one-half the size of that enclosing a double, and that 

 of a double was more than two-thirds the size of a 

 three-germ ball, the less the number of seeds a ball 

 contained, the larger would be their breakfast. His 

 boyhood recollection was that the sow that raised the 

 smallest litter, raised the biggest pigs, but he was 

 told that his reasoning could not be applied to sugar- 

 beet seed and that vitality would have to be bred into 

 the plants after the single germ characteristic should 

 have become fixed. 



This was in the early spring of 1903, and in due 

 course the singles were planted on the Arlington 

 Experimental Farm of the Department of Agriculture, 

 near Washington. The germination was favorable, 

 and contrary to the predictions of the botanists, the 

 vitality cf the plants was abnormally high, the highest 

 of any sugar-beet seed ever grown by the Department. 

 At the close of the season about 1000 beets grown from 



