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The Brown Family in California 



By JASON BROWN 

 CHAPTER TWELVE 



IN WHICH MEANS OF PROTECTION TO VEGETABLE GARDENS ARE SET FORTH 

 BY WILLIAM SIMPSON. 





HO is this Professor Holden of 

 Iowa?" asked William Simpson, 

 stretching his six feet two out on 

 a log and pulling his hat comfort- 

 ably over his eyes. 



We were picnicking on Rock 

 Creek; it was Washington's Birth- 

 day; one of those lovely after- 

 noons which we have frequent- 

 ly of a late February in California. 



Professor Bradshaw, head of the public schools 

 in Kinney's Corners, who keeps posted on cur- 

 rent events, now asserted his position as spokes- 

 man in matters of the wider knowledge. 



"Professor P. G. Holden of Iowa is the great- 

 est expounder of the doctrine of seed-corn selec- 

 tion," said the good school-master, tapping the 

 end of a hard-boiled egg and sprinkling on a little 

 salt. "Professor Holden is the man who helped 

 to increase the com output of Iowa ninety-three 

 million bushels in one year. In a single year 

 he increased the corn crop sixty-four million 

 bushels over the average production of fourteen 

 previous years." 

 "How did he do it?" asked Mrs. Simpson. 

 "I was just coming to that," said School-master 

 Bradshaw, gratified with the impression he had 

 made. "He did it by showing the farmers of Iowa 

 the difference in production from good seed and 

 bad. He proved the success of the seed-corn 

 theory in a series of experiments at the Iowa 

 Agricultural College. Last spring he visited about 

 thirty farms near the college, taking samples of 

 the various seed-corn that the farmers had. He 

 planted these samples in one field, so that the 

 conditions of soil, weather and treatment would 

 be equal. The yield in the fall ranged from 

 thirty-five to seventy-five bushels an acre and the 

 proportion of seed that grew — ahem, I might say 

 germinated — varied from ninety-eight per cent 

 to less than fifty per cent. This showed that 

 had care been exercised in selecting and plant- 

 ing the seed-corn the yield would have been a 

 uniform seventy-five bushels to the acre. The dif- 

 ference between the good and the bad seeds had 

 cost the careless farmers fifteen dollars an acre 

 on one year's crop." 



"Isn't that great?" said Simpson." He reached 

 right out and discovered something so simple 

 that nobody had ever thought of it before." 



"The value of his experiments to humanity are 

 incalculable," declared the School-master, pomp- 

 ously. 



11 



