xii IMPKOVING CULTIVATED PLANTS 145 



ago, noticed a few ears of wheat which seemed a 

 specially good kind. He carefully pulled the ears 

 when they were ripe, kept the grains separate, and 

 sowed them in a special plot. They grew into 

 plants which had the same good qualities as their 

 parents, and in a few years there was enough seed 

 to put the new variety on the market. Other 

 people found it as useful as Hunter did, and it 

 spread over Scotland and England and even into 

 France, and is called Hunter's wheat to this day. 



There is another story, even more curious, of a 

 farmer who, for some purpose or other, climbed on 

 the top of a corn-rick. When he came down he 

 found that an ear of corn was sticking to his coat- 

 tail, and that this ear seemed to be specially fine. 

 He saved the seed, sowed it separately, and after 

 several years had the satisfaction, like Mr. Hunter, 

 of being godfather to a new variety. 



This is one way, then, of making new varieties, 

 by merely picking out from among thousands of 

 ordinary plants the one or two which chance to 

 be exceptional, and breeding from these. This is a 

 slow process, and it was by such a slow process, for 

 the most part, that improvements in seed-producing 

 plants were carried out down almost to the second 

 half of the eighteenth century. Since then a very 

 much quicker, though very laborious, method has 

 been more and more adopted, with the result that 



L 



