18 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE 



September, 1921 



date with no duplication of effort. I have 

 found printed field books a great conven- 

 ience. These have headings inserted and 

 are ruled into ten columns per page so 

 that each page takes care of ten plots or 

 rows and a book of 100 pages is sufficient 

 to record 1,000 plots. Such books may con- 

 tain all seasonal data such as time of plant- 

 ing, emerging, heading and ripening, 

 stand, disease, yields, etc. 



To supplement the field books, map re- 

 cords are desirable to show the historj' of 

 the land at a glance. These records may be 

 draAvn conveniently into a book ruled quad- 

 rilaterally in centimeter squares. One 

 map may show the crops planted, another 

 one the kind of soil preparation and a 

 third one the yields obtained for each sea- 

 son. This series of maps makes a con- 

 venient and permanent history of the land 

 which can be quite conveniently used for 

 reference. In addition to the field books 



and map records, summary record sheets or 

 books are de.sirable so that all yield re- 

 cords may be tabulated and averaged each 

 season at the close of the season's work. 



Thus the men in charge will know the 

 results and Avill be able to bring them to- 

 gether quickly for the information of their 

 constituency. , 



Conclusion 



I have pointed out the value of system and 

 standardization in laying out the fields and 

 in making the records and I have tried to 

 emphasize the advantages to be attained 

 by holding the work well within bounds 

 and attempting to do no more work than 

 can be done thoroughly. I have offered 

 a few practical suggestions for carrying on 

 the work. It is hoped that some of these 

 suggestions may be of value to my co- 

 workers. At any rate, they may furnish 

 material for further profitable discussion. 



Distribution of Elite vStock Seed 



By MANLEY CHAMPLIN, Professor of Field Husbandry, University of 



Saskatchewan. 



(Paper prepared for Canadian Seed Growers" Convention, Ottawa, 



June 6th, 1921). 



During the past ten years Professors 

 Bracken and Cutler and their associates 

 have been carrying on selective breeding 

 of wheat, oats and barley and for the last 

 five or six years Professor Kirk has been 

 carrying on selective breeding work with 

 alfalfa and more recently with sweet 

 clover. 



As a result of this work, pure line 

 strains of some of the cereals had l)een 

 developed when the writer assumed his 

 duties last September. In addition to the 

 pure line strains coming up from the plant 

 i)reeding nursery, certain stocks of wheat, 

 barley, alfalfa and sw^eet clover had been 

 very carefully purified and reduced to the 

 uniform type by roguing and seed selec- 

 tion. In the fall of 1920 sufficient amounts 

 of sieed were available to warrant us in 

 starting a system of seed distribution. 



In Saskatchewan, nearly all the agri- 

 cultural districts have local organizations 

 known as Agricultural Societies. The 

 executives of these societies have an an- 

 nual meeting at the University in 

 January. All of our seeds were invoiced 

 and catalogued and announcements were 

 made at the Agricultural Societies' Con- 

 vention last January. Seed lists or cata- 

 logues wiere mailed to each society soon 

 after the meeting. Sales were not res- 

 tricted to members of the . Agricultural 

 Societies and seed lists were furnished to 

 anyone upon request. But the Agricultural 

 Societies had first chance at these seeds. 

 In some instances the societies arranged 

 for several plantings and sent in orders 

 for considerable stocks of seeds. Indivi- 

 dual orders rapidly took up the remain- 

 ing stocks with but three or four excep- 



