114 TOMATO CULTURE 



merits of successful seed breeding. Without it one 

 is certain to vary from year to year in the type se- 

 lected and in just so far as he does this, even if it 

 be toward what might be called improvements or in 

 regard to an unimportant quality, he undermines all 

 his work and makes it impossible to establish a strain 

 which can be relied upon to produce an exact type. 



With this description in hand, search out one or 

 more plants which seem the nearest to the ideal. In 

 doing this it should be kept in mind that the charac- 

 ter of the seed is determined by the plant rather than 

 by the individual fruit. Therefore, a plant whose 

 fruit is most uniformly of the desired type should be 

 chosen over one having a small proportion of its fruits 

 of very perfect type, the others being diflPerent and 

 variable. Save seed from one or more fruits from 

 each of the selected plants, keeping that from each 

 fruit, or at least each plant, separate. Give it a num- 

 ber and make a record of how nearly, in each partic- 

 ular, the plant and fruit of each number come to the 

 desired ideal. I regard the saving of each lot sepa- 

 rately and recording its characters as very important, 

 even when all have been selected to and come equally 

 close to precisely the same ideal. Quite often the 

 seed of one plant will produce plants precisely like it, 

 while that of another, equal or superior, will produce 

 plants of which no two are alike and none like that 

 which produced the seed, so that often the mixing of 

 seed from different plants of the same general type, 

 and seemingly of equal quality, prevents the establish- 

 ment of a uniform type. 



The next year from lo to loo plants raised from 



