BIOLOGY OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 93 



Agricultural efficiency. Wherever possible let each member 

 of the class choose some local plant or animal industry and 

 collect records, establish working standards, and figure out the 

 local percentage of efficiency. This might well form the main 

 thesis work of the year, and, in a community in which agricul- 

 ture is important, by distributing theses to cover the different 

 crops we may make this work contribute to civic advancement. 

 A recent estimate by Emerson yields the following results : 



STANDARDS AND PERCENTAGE OF EFFICIENCY FOR 

 FOLLOWING CROPS 



The standard of 500 bushels of potatoes per acre is ad- 

 mittedly low. By the mere addition of brains (_" cultivated 

 thought ") to breeding and selection of variety, and scientific 

 precision in fertilizers and culture methods, this standard 

 might be raised to 1000 bushels, possibly, without increasing 

 per-acre cost of operation, except to pick up the additional 

 500 bushels. Probably Lord Rosebery holds the world's 

 record : 2053 bushels of potatoes 1754 marketable and 299 

 bushels of culls per acre. With the standard at 2000 bushels 

 our scale of efficiency falls to 4'| per cent. 



Hills of potatoes vary remarkably in the same field, and 

 beginnings have been made in " hill selection " of seed on this 

 account. Tubers planted from strong hills have thus been 

 found to yield as high as sixteen times as many pounds as 



J Pat a obtained elsewhere, 



