NILSSON'S DISCOVERY 45 



a well-known fact that his "Original Red Wheat" after- 

 ward proved to be a failure. 



A very remarkable principle has been introduced of late 

 into the methods of improving cereals by two highly distin- 

 guished breeders. Working independently of one another, 

 they have come to the same idea, and the ameliorations they 

 have brought about give proof of the correctnessof their views. 

 At the agricultural experiment station of Minnesota, W. M. 

 Hays has applied it to the improvement of wheat, and in 

 Germany on his farm at Petkus von Lochow has applied it 

 to the selection of rye. The idea is the judging of the hered- 

 itary value of a plant, not by its own visible marks, but by 

 the average value of its progeny. It must be granted 

 that the visible qualities of a plant are only a very imper- 

 fect basis of measurement of its fitness to reproduce these 

 qualities in its progeny. The direct study of this progeny 

 in itself must be a far more reliable guide in such an 

 estimate. 



The new principle was of course combined with the 

 choice of single parent plants as the starting points for new 

 races, and in this important feature it complies with the 

 principles laid down by the two first English breeders whose 

 methods I have discussed. But with them the first choice 

 was the principal act, although Le Couteur as well as Shirreff 

 in his second method have largely relied on the comparison 

 of the progeny of their first selections and rejected all those 

 that proved inferior to his expectations. 



In Minnesota, the most widely cultivated varieties of 

 wheat were Fife and Blue Stem, and both were decidedly 

 inferior to the ordinary spring wheat varieties of other states. 

 However, they showed themselves to be as impure as any 

 other ordinary sorts, and thereby yielded material for method- 

 ical improvement. Hays chose from among them a con- 

 siderable number of types, and after sowing the seed of these 



