CHAPTER II. 



BREEDING WHEAT, CORN AND OTHER CROPS, 



The possibilities for making valuable improvements 

 in domestic animals and plants offer opportunities for 

 the profitable employment of energies and capital at 

 every point. .In many cases private enterprise properly 

 assumes the work and secures the rewards. In other 

 cases co-operative associations can best meet the condi- 

 tions for making improvements and securing* that pro- 

 portion of the new values which will pay those who 

 do the work. Rewards are needed to induce breeders 

 to continue actively pressing forward the improvements 

 needed by the practical growers who use the new breeds 

 and varieties. In yet other instances large and powerful 

 corporations for breeding and merchandizing can best 

 effect the improvements needed by the mass of the peo- 

 ple and secure that share of the rewards which will 

 support their business. In not a few lines the work 

 may best be accomplished by those servants of the pub- 

 lic who are employed by State experiment stations, 

 by the national government and by other institutions 

 of a public or semi-public nature. 



In many lines of field crop production the field is 

 entirely unoccupied, so far as known to the writer. No 

 one in this country has placed on the market a single 

 newly-bred variety of timothy, brome grass, red clover, 

 alsike clover, white clover, alfalfa, Kentucky blue grass, 

 orchard grass, millet, soy beans, Kaffir corn, flax, broom 

 corn, nor of many other field and horticultural crops, 

 while the breeding of forest crops has hardly been men- 

 tioned in any country. In only a few lines of field crops 

 has a substantial start been made. 



The most wonderful scientific work in any one line 

 has been accomplished in the breeding of sugar beets, 



