II 



PEDIGREE CORN AND STOCK 



ORIGINALITY has been claimed for the man who 

 plants his cabbages ; but originality of another order 

 cannot be denied to the man who devises a new kind 

 of cabbage to plant. If agriculture is to be progres- 

 sive, behind the farmer must always be the man of 

 ideas, very often, as history tells us, not a farmer 

 himself; and we spent a morning in Warminster, 

 visiting one such contributor of ideas to the farming 

 community. 



Mr. E. S. Beaven's work upon barley is widely 

 known. On a field of ideal uniformity of soil and 

 exposure for experimental work he has erected a long 

 wired-in cage, within which his barleys are grown in 

 careful rows, each seed being dibbled in separately at 

 exact distances from its neighbours. We were first 

 shown a collection of all the known barleys from every 

 part of the world two-rowed, four-rowed, six-rowed 

 many of them so unlike the type that a farmer 

 would deny their right to be called barley at all. 

 Very few of these specimens possess any agricultural 

 value in England ; even the raiser of new varieties 

 generally finds it best to base his work on the sorts 

 which the farmer's experience has shown to be suited 

 to the country. The improver can then proceed upon 

 two lines by hybridization, which will yield some- 



