Breeding Experiments at the Minnesota Station. 83 



norecl any more than records of performance. We need 

 the methods of show judging and the methods of the 

 statistician combined. Bromus was planted 2x2 feet 

 apart and should have been 3x3 feet apart in a few 

 thousand nursery hills and as winter approached many 

 of these plants, each from a single hill, had a spread of 

 nearly two feet. This grass spreads so vigorously and its 

 underground' stems are so tenacious that the question 

 has arisen as to whether we should not select it for 

 varieties for moister climates which have less of the 

 quack grass tendency of too great persistency when it 

 is desired to destroy it in the rotation. The variation 

 in height, in yield of forage and of seed in individual 

 plants is very unusual in this variety. Eight new varie- 

 ties originated seven years ago, each from a single 

 mother plant, which have been in field tests for several 

 years, promise to provide a few superior kinds of this 

 species, which is still new to American farmers. 



The cowpea nursery was well nigh a failure, both 

 in 1902 and 1903. These were the coldest, wettest 

 seasons ever experienced in Minnesota for late plants 

 and none of the 2,000 cowpea plants, 3x3 feet apart, 

 of either year matured seeds. This plant will require 

 such radical modification to adapt it to producing seeds 

 for use for forage crops in this climate that trying to 

 breed it earlier in Minnesota is somewhat discou raging. 



Red clover has been under experimentation in the 

 plant breeding nursery for thirteen years and the results 

 were very meager until the past few years. The efforts 

 to secure hardier blood lines 'have been persistent and 

 methods more recently adopted give promise of good 

 results. In breeding this species the effort to select for 

 distinguishing marks cost years of labor and resulted 

 in not only the loss of the labor but the loss temporarily 

 of an opportunity to give to the Northwest a hardier 

 clover. We bred from white and pale pink colored 

 flowered sports instead of going directly for hardy 

 plants. Many breeders of plants and animals who are 

 trying to breed for intrinsic value by selecting to some 



