PLANT LIFE. , 51 



ing of the latter, American grape stocks for the Euro- 

 pean grape to avoid the ravages of the insect called 

 Phylloxera, which kills the roots of the latter but in- 

 jures those of the former only a little. Grafting is 

 not successful except when cion and stock come from 

 closely related plants. 



EXERCISE. Examine flowers of wild rose, bean, mustard, Irish 

 potato, sunflower, or aster, lily, corn and canna and find the different 

 parts, noting their number and arrangement. How many kinds of 

 . fruits (speaking botanically) can you find? 



SECTION X. PLANT BREEDING. 



, . | ..,-. ... i ' ..... :- -v. >, , 



In the various forms of grafting and other methods 

 of propagation mentioned the operator makes use of 

 sorts of plants already existent. But it is possible to 

 make use of methods by which improved sorts are pro- 

 duced. These can then be perpetuated by grafting 

 or other means. This production of new sorts is 

 called Plant Breeding. 



Seed Selection. The simplest form of this is seed 

 selection. It is based upon the fact that plants rarelv 

 come absolutely "true to seed." In other words all 

 plants grown from seeds vary some from each other 

 and from the parent plant. In the case of the ordi- 

 nary fruits this is very noticeable, while in some plants 

 that are ordinarily grown from seed the variation is 

 slight, but even there it exists. Seed selection con- 

 sists simply in saving the seed of those few plants out 

 of hundreds or thousands grown which seem to show 

 the most desirable characteristics. 



Methods of Seed Selection. For the farmer the 

 production of new sorts is perhaps out of the ques- 

 tion, but he can use this method to improve the yield 

 and quality of his main crops with but a few hours ex- 

 tra work each year. Shortly before the seed is ripe 

 he goes over his field and picks out a number of plants 

 that seem to him to come nearest to his ideal of what 



