SEEDS AND SEED SOWING. 57 



It is found to be quite a general law obtaining- among 

 plants, that th qualities of tht parent an much mon potent and 

 thus mon liable to be transmitted than sorm especially desirabli 

 qualities of a few individual fi-uits, which may occur on a plant 

 otherwist defective. For instance, Living-stone, who has done 

 much to improve the tomato, selected seed for fifteen years 

 from the best tomatoes that approached most nearly in size 

 and other qualities the best modern tomatoes without noting 

 much improvement. He says, "I was then no nearer the goal 

 than when I started. Such stock seed would reproduce every 

 trace of their ancestry, viz.: thin fleshed, rough, undesirable 

 fruits." It finally occurred to him to select from the special 

 merits of the plants as a whole, instead of from the best fruits 

 without regard to the plants on which they grew. Improve- 

 ment then came easily and rapidly, and in afewyears he obtained 

 the Parag'on. Acme and Perfection varieties, which were vastly 

 superior to and have entirely supplanted the old varieties of 

 tomatoes. Again, in selecting seed corn it is more important 

 to save seed from plants having ears approaching the desired 

 size of cob, kernel, etc.. rather than to select the largest ker- 

 nels alone or to select from ears after they have been pulled. 



Where it is desired to hasten tht ripening period of a variety, 

 only tin seed from itu earliest maturing specimens from a plant 

 having tin largest number of early specimens should be planted. 

 In order to fix latt maturing qualities, seed should bt saved from 

 lati maturing fruits on plants possessing thesi features to the 

 gri atest extent. 



Tin continued selection of any seed from inferior specimens 

 results in the fixing of the poorer qualities even mon surely 

 than tin selection of seed from the better plants results 

 in improvement. By injudicious selection the cabbage has 

 sometimes been changed from a biennial to an annual 

 producing no head at all but going to seed the first year. 

 When cabbage has been grown for several generations from 

 stem sprouts and not from head sprouts, the effect has some- 

 times been to lengthen the stem at the expense of the head, 

 until the seed stock becomes run out entirely and is in effect 

 no longer true modern cabbage seed, since it has partly revert- 

 ed to the original type. An instance of this occurred in a 

 neighborhood in Nova Scotia where, for the sake of economy 



