DIVISION AND SPECIALIZATION 163 



Hopkins was able to prove very simply that 

 he could accomplish results in the cross-breed- 

 ing of corn, in a single generation, which, ac- 

 cording to Darwin should have required many 

 decades of selection and survival. The work 

 of de Vries, Mendel and Hopkins has placed 

 in the hands of the intelligent farmer the 

 means of improving his own seed, developing 

 the particular strain of a given plant best 

 adapted to the peculiar conditions of his land. 

 And once having developed a pedigreed strain 

 its vitality becomes of the utmost concern. 

 The early homesteaders carried their bags of 

 seed west with them, and continued sowing 

 from the same seed year after year. In fact 

 in their penny-pinching economies they fre- 

 quently saved the culls of their harvest as 

 seed, because of the higher price their grain 

 would bring when sorted and graded. Small 

 wonder that inside of a generation yields in 

 many sections began to fall off, when the short- 

 sighted husbandman sought to perpetuate his 

 prosperity by breeding from the weakest in- 

 stead of the strongest of his seeds. Not many 

 years ago a rural journal in Iowa sent a 

 student among the Iowa farmers to test the 

 vitality of their seed corn. The investigator 



