1288 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



for feeding stock, may bring as much or more for this use, than a 

 bearing one would have done in the food market. Even for food 

 purposes at their highest standard, as for restaurants, clubs, etc., 

 the best Scotch potatoes fetch prices at highest levels; hence an 

 ever- increasing demand for seed-potatoes of these varieties ; and not 

 only from English farmers, but now also from many continental 

 countries as well, and even as far as India. This trade is not simply 

 assured because of the long-known advantage of larger and better 

 yields of crops of many kinds when propagated from seeds or tubers 

 brought from a distant locality; nor even because even those far- 

 fetched varieties are for that reason apt to diminish in their returns 

 after a few years of acclimatisation, and so to need renewal ; but also 

 because still better varieties are constantly being produced. A 

 notable factor is that a reputation for probity has been established; 

 and this deservedly, from the ever-increasing care of each new variety 

 on cultivation to prevent any contamination by other kinds. The 

 best "seed" farmers not only select their tubers, and scrutinise their 

 manure, lest it bring in small potatoes from other stocks, but even 

 take care to plant their picked stock in land which has not been 

 used for potatoes for as much as six preceding years. Even after all 

 this preliminary care, their best workers are trained to search 

 through the growing field for "rogues", i.e. to recognise young plants 

 of any other variety, and to weed these out to their last tubers with 

 the same care. So after all this, their guarantee can be safely taken: 

 though again the Board of Agriculture is available for its verificatory 

 Report; in which even an impurity of J per cent, is sufficient to 

 lower the grade from A to B. Such care is of course expensive: but 

 the prizes, to the skilful breeders especially, are great : for fine new 

 seed-potatoes have sometimes been sold, in their first season, for 

 their weight in sovereigns and more ; and this to expert cultivators, 

 who rapidly propagate from them in quantit}^ for sale to farmers, 

 and this at an attainable price, though stiU a profitable one. 



Similar care, alike of breeding, selection, and culture, is increas- 

 ingly being taken throughout the agricultural world, and that of 

 horticulture, too: so that good varieties and "pure lines" of these 

 can increasingly be relied on. Hence the old indifference or prejudices 

 of the self-supposed "practical man" are abating, though too 

 much still lingers, as ignorance in the public and their leaders 

 also. It may be remembered that a would-be economist in Congress 

 some years ago proposed to cut down the annual grant for the U.S. 

 Department of Agriculture, and in favour of his would-be practical 

 desideratum, of more battleships : but as reference to statistics over 

 a reasonable period of preceding years showed its services, in crop- 

 improving and crop-saving, to amount to more than ^2,000,000,000, 

 it was permitted to continue its activities, if not even to extend 

 them. 



