THE NEW EARTH 



wheats have been made since the first success- 

 ful test. One seedsman in the city of Paris 

 has produced over three thousand wheats, and 

 I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of these 

 wheats in great cases in the laboratory of this 

 seedsman upon his estate near Paris, not one 

 of them of any value to the world save as it is 

 a record, a proof that no good wheat will be 

 likely to come from the parents from which it 

 descended. For, out of the thousands of wheats 

 which have been created, few have ever been 

 found better than their parents, — thousands 

 have been worse. 



It is these few, these individual instances, the 

 one new wheat of ten thousand, which is worth 

 all the years of labor. This new wheat, larger 

 in yield than its predecessors, as rich (or richer) 

 in food, as strong (or stronger) to resist disease, 

 will go on reproducing itself indefinitely, to the 

 end of time ; it will not be changed save at the 

 decree of man. 



But it is so slow, so very slow in reaching 

 the period when anything definite can be said 

 about it as to its relative value alongside of 

 the older wheats. A new race of wheat begins 

 with a single kernel. The first year this kernel 



54 



