BREEDING NEW GRAINS 



will produce but a few grains. These must be 

 gathered from the single hill with the utmost 

 care and only the best ones kept for future 

 tests. All through the life of the succeeding 

 kernels from the parent wheat it is a constant 

 succession of selections. Another year must 

 elapse before the tiny harvest of this one ker- 

 nel of wheat may be garnered, — it is still a 

 fairy's harvest. But year by year it grows until 

 at last it passes out of the realm of the fairy, — 

 it has become the get of a giant. Perhaps at 

 the end of ten years there will be enough of 

 the new wheat to plant the twentieth of an 

 acre; then the progression becomes far more 

 rapid, the results more tangible. 



But, before this period is reached, it is far 

 more than likely that the experimenter has 

 found out that the new wheat is no better than 

 the old, no larger in yield, no stronger to with- 

 stand disease, no richer in food than the parents 

 from which it sprang. Indeed, more than this, 

 he may find that the new wheat is far inferior 

 to the old, and all the years of patient study 

 and care have gone for naught. 



Other wheats, however, at the same time, 

 have been traveling the same road up through 



55 



