AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS 



sive agriculture.' ... I told him I would like to 

 have him give me 1 10,000 for prizes to set this thing 

 going and to keep it up for three years. He pro- 

 vided the money with all good will, and my little |ioo 

 came back a hundred fold. The prizes were offered 

 to boys and girls to encourage selecting the largest 

 heads of the most vigorous plants and growing seed 

 from those heads on a plot by itself. There was a 

 yearly competition for every province; and a main 

 competition extending over three years. Any boy 

 or girl living on a Canadian farm, who was under 

 eighteen years of age, could enter as a competitor. 

 In each province ten prizes were offered for oats and 

 ten for wheat, the prizes in the yearly competition 

 ranging from I25 for the first down to I5 for the 

 tenth. Over fifteen hundred entries were received, 

 of whom eight hundred satisfactorily completed their 

 first year's work, and four hundred and fifty com- 

 pleted the three years' course. 



"The competitor was required to pick by hand the 

 largest heads from the most vigorous and productive 

 plants in sufficient quantity to obtain seed with 

 which to sow a quarter of an acre of ground, which 

 became the stock seed grain plot, now called the 

 hand-selected seed plot. Before the crop of this 

 quarter of an acre was harvested, the competitor 

 again selected the largest heads from the most vigorous 

 plants in sufficient quantity to sow the quarter of an 

 acre, which became the hand-selected seed plot for 

 the following year. Out of the heads selected each 

 year the competitor sent to me at Ottawa one hun- 

 dred of the largest. A careful record was kept of 

 the number of grains per hundred heads, and also of 



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