PLANT BREEDING 49 



2,100,000 extra bushels of barley, 24,000,000 

 bushels of potatoes. 



But these vast possibilities are not alone for 

 one year, or for our own time or race, but are 

 beneficent legacies for every man, woman, and 

 child who shall ever inhabit the earth. And who 

 can estimate the elevating and refining influences 

 and moral value of flowers with all their graceful 

 forms and bewitching shades and combinations 

 of colors and exquisitely varied perfumes? 

 These silent influences are unconsciously felt 

 even by those who do not appreciate them con- 

 sciously, and thus with better and still better 

 fruits, nuts, grains, and flowers will the earth 

 be transformed, man's thoughts turned from the 

 base, destructive forces into the nobler produc- 

 tive ones which will lift him to higher planes 

 of action toward that happy day when man 

 shall offer his brother man, not bullets and 

 bayonets, but richer grains, better fruits, and 

 fairer flowers. 



Cultivation and care may help plants to do 

 better work temporarily, but by selective breed- 

 ing plants may be brought into existence which 

 will do better work always in all places and for 

 all time. Plants are to be produced which will 

 perform their appointed work better, quicker, 

 and with the utmost precision. 



