20 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



of differing soil and climatic conditions, of very distinct strains, 

 each adapted to certain cultural conditions or consumers' require- 

 ments, and often as well worthy of being distinguished by distinct 

 varietal name as those already found in seedsmen's catalogues. 



Through this experience the belief of my boyhood has become 

 the conviction of my later years, that every individual seed carries 

 the same sort of potentiality and limitation of development as an 

 egg or a new born rabbit. When we hatch the hen's egg under a 

 duck the chick will not take to the water though the duck and the 

 rest of the brood do so and will leave it alone upon the shore. 

 Nor can we, by putting a still blind young rabbit to nurse with a 

 litter of pups, teach it to bark. 



Every seed is made up of a certain balanced sum of ancestral 

 influences and fixed in character beyond the possibility of change 

 by growth conditions, before it left the parent plant. There are 

 often distinct differences in the varietal character of seeds from 

 individual plants of the same breeding as well as in the yield of 

 seeds in different locations. Seedsmen are quick to secure strains 

 giving the largest yield of seed and have stock grown from them 

 in the location giving the largest seed crop, with little attention 

 to the yield and quality of usable vegetables. 



Although the varietal character of every seed is fixed at its 

 maturity, it is sometimes modified by climatic and other condi- 

 tions while it was developing, and in some cases such modifications 

 are transmitted to succeeding generations, so it is sometimes the 

 case, that local grown seed will give a different return from that 

 matured under other conditions and not infrequently seed grown 

 in one's own garden will give better returns than that grown 

 elsewhere. 



Conditions may modify the size and health of the plant but 

 cannot change its character any more than the mother duck and 

 sister ducklings can induce the chick to swim, or the litter of pups 

 teach the rabbit to bark; nor can the varietal character of the 

 plant which may be grown from a seed be changed by cultural 

 conditions, though we may secure its better development, and b^' 

 carefully breeding from superlative individuals of a certain type 

 gradually change its form and size, and a wise selection of the best 

 plants is the foundation stone of all successful seed breeding. 



