IMPEOVED STRAINS OF ROOTS 85 



longer be able to superintend the work. In September, 1888, 

 Helweg read a paper at the meeting of representatives of the 

 Society for Improving Cultivated Plants, in which he proposed 

 that the Society should arrange annual " Comparative Cultiva- 

 tion Tests " of seed of the different kinds of roots. 1 The 

 purpose of these competitions was manifold. To a certain 

 extent it may be said that Helweg aimed at finding which of 

 the varieties of mangels, turnips, swedes, or carrots, was the 

 best ; for instance, whether Elvetham or Golden Tankard among 

 the mangels, or whether Yellow Tankard or New Bronze Top 

 among the turnips, yielded the most food-stuff, the largest 

 amount of solids per acre. But the chief purpose was to obtain 

 reliable information about the different strains of roots, of 

 which seed were in the market, and to compare the home-grown 

 seed with the imported seed. It was Helweg's aim from the 

 beginning to encourage those seed growers who had good 

 strains, and to induce those who worked with poor material to 

 change it for the better strains, so as gradually to eliminate 

 from the market seed of bad or inferior strains, and to get them 

 replaced by seed from the best strains. The result would be to 

 render the growing of roots more profitable to the farmers, and 

 the farming industry more valuable to the country. 



His proposal was very well received. In January, 1889, the 

 Society issued its first invitation to Danish seed growers to 

 send in, free of cost, samples of seed to be grown in competition 

 with samples of seed from seed firms abroad. The samples of 

 seed were divided so as to be grown two years in succession, and 

 the results of the two years' growing were to be published 

 annually (first time in 1891) without mentioning names of 

 growers or firms. Five samples of Elvetham, ten of Barres, and 

 five of the German variety Eckendorf were entered in 1889, 

 besides turnips, carrots, and swedes of different varieties. As 

 it is the method of investigation and the general results obtained 

 which alone interest us here, I shall in the following pages deal 

 mostly with the reports on mangels, but it should be understood 

 that similar investigations with similar results were carried out 

 with varieties of the other kinds of roots. During each of he 

 following years samples were called in to be grown during that 



1 " Om Landbrugeta Kulturplanter," K0benhavn, 1890, p. 6. 



