226 Plant-Breeding 



uniform the plant in all its parts, the greater is the likeli- 

 hood that it will transmit its characters. If one is striv- 

 ing for larger flowers, for example, he will secure better 

 results if he choose seeds from plants that bear large 

 flowers throughout, than he will if he choose them from 

 some one of the large flowering branches on a plant that 

 bears indifferent flowers on the remaining branches, even 

 though this given branch produces much larger flowers 

 than those borne on the large-flowered plant. Small 

 potatoes from productive hills give a better product than 

 large potatoes from unproductive hills. The habit of 

 selecting large ears from a bin of corn, or large melons 

 from the grocer's wagon, is much less efficient in producing 

 large products the following season than the practice of 

 going into the fields and selecting the most uniformly 

 large-fruited parents. A very poor plant may occasion- 

 ally produce one or two very superior fruits, but the seeds 

 are more likely to perpetuate the characters of the plant 

 than of the fruits. 



The following experiences detailed by Henri L. de 

 Vilmorin illustrate the proposition admirably: "I tried 

 an experiment with seeds of Chrysanthemum carinatum 

 gathered on double, single, and semi-double heads, all 

 growing on one plant, and found no difference whatever 

 in the proportion of single and double-flowered plants. 

 In striped verbenas, an unequal distribution of the color 

 is often noticed; some heads are pure white, some of a 

 self-color, and most are marked with colored stripes on 

 white ground. I had seeds taken severally from all and 

 tested alongside one another. The result was the same. 

 All the seeds from one plant, whatever the color of the 



