104 HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



The work of Carton Bros, is being continued, but of recent years few 

 leports have been published in scientific journals. Dr. William Saunders, of 

 the Central Experimental Farm of Canada, has originated a large number of 

 oat varieties in connection with his extensive work in breeding cereals, etc., 

 a report of which is given in his paper before this conference. More detailed 

 accounts can be found in the annual reports of the work of the Experimental 

 Farm. Rimpan 1 gives four reliable cases of natural crosses between distinct 

 types of oats. In one of these cases the progeny was grown for several years 

 and a number of forms selected. The parent varieties were Hallett's Canadian, 

 a common white oat, and Black Tartarian, a black side oat. In 1879 they were 

 plnted in two plats side by side. In 1880 a brown hulled plant was noticed 

 in the Canadian grown from seed of the last season. In 1881 the seed of this 

 plant produced a number of intermediate types, some of which were fixed by 

 selection during the following seasons. Rimpan gives an excellent plate show- 

 ing the varying progeny of this cross. 



Thos. Jamieson 2 records in a recent volume of the Proceedings of the 

 Agricultural Research Association of Scotland some experiments in the natural 

 crossing of oats, .but since he records his crosses as showing in the color of the 

 hulls the same season that the cross was supposed to have been made, his 

 results must be regarded as unreliable. But the fact that the progeny of sup- 

 posed crosses varied widely the next year makes it possible that the cross 

 might have been made the year before he started his work. 



Fairchild 3 in a recent number of Experiment Station Record discusses the 

 breeding work of the Station for Plant Breeding at Svalof, Sweden, under the 

 direction of Dr. Nilsson, and mentions the work being carried on with oats, 

 but does not go into details. The work at this Station is being done entirely 

 by selection, Dr. Nilsson finding that the natural variation gives sufficient 

 opportunity for selection. One of the interesting experiments being carried 

 on at this Station is the selection of pure strains of the different varieties, 

 the separation being made on botanical characters. The selected strains show 

 great uniformity, but are said by some who have grown them not to be so 

 satisfactory as the original variety composed of three or more mixed strains. 



The above mentioned papers include most of the scientific articles on oat 

 breeding, but numerous popular articles can be found in agricultural journals, 

 etc. Oat breeding and adaptation are being carried on by some of the State 

 Experiment Stations in this country, but few published results of these experi- 

 ments are to be had. 



The work in oat breeding was taken up by the Plant Breeding Laboratory 

 of the Department of Agriculture in the Spring of 1902, and though it has 

 been carried on only one season, some of the results in crossing and experience 

 in selection are thought to be worth recording. The literature on the subject 

 and the past experience of the writer all tended toward the conclusion that the 

 artificial pollination of oat flowers is very difficult and attended with a very 

 small percentage of successes as compared with wheat. 



1 Rimpan. Kreuzungproducte landwirtschaftliche Kulturpflanzen. Landw. Jahrb. 

 Band 20. 1891. p. 364. 



2 Jamieson, Thos. Natural Cross-fertilization and Change of Seed. Proc. Ag. Re- 

 search Assoc. 1897. p 31-50. 



8 Fairchild, David G. Exp. Sta. Record. XIII. No. 9. 1902. p. 814. 



