270 PLANT-BREEDING 



was judged probable that among the resistant Imperial barley 

 some spare individuals might be found with compact kernels, 

 suitable for brewery purposes, and that they would be recog- 

 nizable by the form of the hairs of their scales. This con- 

 clusion led to a formal hunt for such specimens. Of course, 

 among some hundreds they could hardly be expected, but 

 in each thousand it might be possible to find a single one. 

 All the fields of the Imperial barley of the station were 

 scrupulously inspected, and any specimen with a diverging 

 type of hairiness was marked out. Many thousands of plants 

 with long and straight hairs had to be analyzed before the 

 desired ones could be found. At the end some sixty were 

 judged worthy of further trial. Their ears were collected 

 separately, and in the next season the progeny of each single 

 selected mother plant could be studied. The investigation 

 was now directly turned to the brewery qualities and taught 

 that in some thirty of the cultures the expected correlation 

 was really present. 



This result crowned the labor of the previous summer, 

 as well as it gave proof of the reliability of the principle in- 

 volved. It was quite sufficient for the practical aim of the 

 experiment. On the field plots of this second generation 

 eight new and valuable types could be discerned, each of 

 them evidently a fine brewer's barley with resistant halms. 

 They were quite as good as the ordinary cultivated Chevalier 

 sorts, though not at all derived from them. Among them 

 all further care had to be directed to a rapid propagation, 

 and to comparative trials of the eight elite strains. One 

 of them was found to be the best, and to comply with all 

 the demands of the brewers. It got the name of Primus- 

 barley, as already quoted. It was resistant even on the 

 hardest soils of Middle Sweden, but its kernels can scarcely 

 be distinguished from those of the best Chevali'er varieties. 

 It is a brewery barley of the very first rank, on account of its 



