66 AGRICULTURE 



Good Seed. For good crops there are necessary three things, 

 good soil, good seed, and good tillage. Of the three, good seed is 

 easiest to secure, and yet it is the one oftenest neglected. Thou- 

 sands of dollars are lost by farmers every year through the use of 

 inferior seed. Thousands of dollars are paid every year for those 

 which could easily be grown at home. 



Selecting Seed in the Field. The farmer should select the best 

 seed from the best plants. To do this he must make the selection in 

 the field. He must consider each plant as a whole, selecting those 

 that are healthy and productive. 



Qualities to Consider. If he gets his seed corn from the crib, 

 he can, it is true, choose large, sound, well-formed ears. But these 

 may have been the only ears on the stalks on which they grew. 

 They will tend to produce one-eared stalks. The crop from them 

 will be smaller than that from field-selected seed, chosen from 

 stalks that have each two or more good ears. It costs little more 

 in tillage and labor to raise forty bushels of corn on an acre of 

 land than to raise twenty bushels; it costs nearly twice as much to 

 produce forty bushels on two acres as it does to produce it on one 

 acre. 



Seeds may be selected from plants with a view to certain qual- 

 ities or products. We prefer sweet, well-flavored melons, and 

 choose them even when they are smaller and less productive than 

 large, coarse ones. By careful selection of roots which are richest in 

 sugar, the sugar in a crop of beets has been increased from eight 

 to eighteen per cent. 



Some varieties are especially valuable because they are vigorous 

 and able to resist disease. In certain sections, only wilt-proof 

 varieties of cotton and of cowpeas can be grown. Farmers sow 

 rust-proof oats because they make a crop in localities where va- 

 rieties not resistant are entire failures. 



