SEED 235 



robustness, or the opposite, in individuals 

 is due to inherent qualities, and not to the 

 influence of the environment, in the widest 

 sense of the term. 



It was chiefly by methods of selection that 

 the old breeders, such as Le Couteur, Chevalier, 

 Hallet, Lawson, Shirreff, and others, secured 

 the results that have made their names 

 famous. At the present time simple selection is 

 still followed with good results, but better and 

 more rapid results often attend selection that 

 has been preceded by crossing. For example, 

 one may take two individual plants of a 

 species, such as wheat or oats, that usually 

 shows self-fertilization, and, with the adoption 

 of precautionary measures that need not be 

 gone into here, one transfers the pollen of 

 one plant to the stigma of the other, and, if 

 fertilization has succeeded, one obtains a 

 cross which combines in it, latent or con- 

 spicuous, the characters of its parents. It 

 is found that plants raised from seed that 

 has been thus secured are much more liable 

 to vary than is the case with plants resulting 

 from self-fertilization. When one has, by 

 this means, fostered the tendency to vary, 

 one is given the opportunity of a much wider 

 range of selection than would otherwise have 

 been possible, and thus improvement begun 



