SEED 225 



Apart from cases where farmers, not 

 having home-grown seed, must go into the 

 market and purchase, many circumstances 

 may arise to make it desirable that a farmer 

 shall import seed to his holding, even where 

 he has supplies of the same species, and even 

 of the same variety. From time to time 

 seed-growers or importers place varieties on 

 the market which possess specially desirable 

 characters, such as productiveness, early 

 ripening, good standing power, etc., and it 

 may pay a farmer to sell seed which he would 

 otherwise use, and to purchase a new strain 

 of the same variety. 



Then, again, it is found from experience 

 that seed from a different soil, or a different 

 climate, produces plants of greater vigour 

 than is displayed by crops of the same variety 

 which has long been grown on the same 

 holding or in the same district. In the case 

 of certain plants and animals a change of soil 

 and climate seems to impart a vital impulse 

 that at once arrests attention. The cause 

 may be obscure, but the result seems to be 

 illustrated in the wonderful productiveness of 

 rabbits in Australia, in the great size of trout 

 in New Zealand, in the extraordinary vigour 

 of English thistles on the pampas of South 

 America, in the aggressiveness of Canadian 

 H 



