38 Breeding Plants and Animals. 



most of the new varieties of cultivated plants have been 

 accidentally discovered rather than the results of efforts 

 of the plant breeder. Those who have worked syste- 

 matically have usually confined their observations to 

 hundreds, or at most to thousands, in their flower beds 

 or green-house benches, or in their vegetable gardens. 

 Producers generally, on the other hand, annually have 

 under review hundreds and thousands and millions of 

 plants in gardens, orchards and fields. Here the curious 

 or the trained eye catches the occasional plant which 

 widely departs from type. The new form may prove 

 so valuable that it is propagated, its progeny selected 

 to type, if need be, and eventually developed into a 

 commercial sort. But the trouble is that the world is 

 not receiving enough of these accidental sports. Peo- 

 ple are not alert enough to discern all such plants, and 

 too few are expert in so propagating and selecting such 

 new stocks as to make of them the most useful varieties. 

 Besides, chance discoveries are too often lost by inef- 

 ficient means of testing or by distributing them under a 

 plan which will fail to induce people to use them in pre- 

 ference to inferior forms. What nature, and chance, 

 and ordinary men, and common methods are now ac- 

 complishing in a slow way is unsatisfactory. Enterprise 

 system, capital, extensive co-operation and large pat- 

 ronage must be brought to operate and accomplish in 

 an adequate, modern, scientific way the rapid and pro- 

 found improvement of our crops and animals. If one- 

 fourth as much enterprise, thought, energy and money 

 as is now devoted to mechanical invention could be 

 diverted into study, experimentation and effort in sci- 

 entific plant and animal breeding, our country would 

 be as famous for its crops and animals as it now is for 

 its bridges, buildings, machine shops and implements. 



Breeding should be made more scientific. Breed- 

 ers of animals who have spent a lifetime in building 

 up fine herds or flocks will, no* doubt, feel that these 

 articles will not especially aid in solving their prob- 

 lems. Possibly some may feel that I have made the 



