72 Breeding Plants and Animals. 



plants. By hybridizing two varieties of wheat we 

 secure in occasional plants of the new hybrid many of 

 the good qualities of both the parents and in some 

 quite new qualities are created and new value ad- 

 ded to old qualities. By testing tens and even 

 hundreds of thousands of the progeny of a given cross 

 we are able to rind an occasional plant which has breed- 

 ing power superior to that found in the parent varieties. 

 The amount of labor required in merely hybridizing 

 is only a very small part of one per cent of the Work 

 of making new hybrids wheats. It consists in increas- 

 ing the hybrids to a large quantity so as to get good 

 vigorous parents to put in nursery trials, testing the 

 mother parents in the nursery so as to eliminate all but 

 those which actually yield best and produce the most 

 value per acre. The milling, baking and laboratory 

 tests are even more important in case of hybrids than 

 in case of wheats produced mainly by selection from 

 good varieties, because in hybrids the quality is often 

 changed from the quality of the parent varieties. It 

 is both wrong and dangerous for an experiment station 

 to distribute a new variety of wheat until its milling 

 and baking value have been definitely determined, and 

 especially so of new hybrid varieties. 



Fig 8 shows students at work making hybrid 

 wheats. The necessary manual dexterity can soon be 

 acquired under instruction, or by studying the matter 

 from pictures shown herein one could soon learn to 

 cross-pollinate wheat. 



In Fig 9 with the subjoined notes are shown 

 many facts about the wheat flower. Any boy or girl 

 who is interested can take the wheat flower apart at the 

 time it is ready to blossom and verify the truth of all 

 the diagrams shown in this figure. 



The essential parts of the flower are the covering of 

 chaff, the female portion of the flower shown at O and 

 S, in 4 A and 4 B; also at 12, 13 and 14 in Fig. 4. 



At the flowering time the stigma spreads out from 

 its appearance at 12 to that of 13, and soon after 



