ON TEXTILE PLANTS 



plants to become the progenitors of the general 

 crop four years from now. 



And this, it will be obvious, is merely the 

 applying of the familiar rules of selection which 

 we have seen illustrated in the production of 

 specialized races of flowers and fruits and vege- 

 tables of many types. The only difference is the 

 practical one that, in my experiments, the inferior 

 members of a fraternity are usually destroyed 

 when the best half dozen have been selected for 

 preservation, instead of being preserved for 

 cropping purposes. 



This modification obviously in no wise alters 

 the principle, but it is a practical change that is 

 clearly necessary to meet the needs of a cultivator 

 who, while striving to improve his crop, must at 

 the same time take such crop as can be grown year 

 by year, without waiting for the best ultimate 

 product. 



Of course there are limits to the amount of 

 development that is possible through such 

 selective breeding. 



The plants operated with have certain heredi- 

 tary limitations, and these are pretty surely fixed 

 by long generations of inbreeding. When these 

 limits are attained by the practical plant devel- 

 oper, through the carrying out of such a system of 

 rotation as that just outlined for a good many 



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