298 Plant-Breeding 



Plant improvement a serious business. In considering 

 the American achievement in plant-breeding, we must 

 divest ourselves at the outset of all idea of " wonder," and 

 "miracle," and other nonsense, which has been so much 

 written into the subject in very recent time. Plant- 

 breeding is a plain and serious business, to be conducted 

 by carefully trained persons in a painstaking and method- 

 ical way. It is not magic. There are persons who have 

 unusual native judgment as to the merits and capabilities 

 of plants and who develop great manual skill; but they 

 are plain and modest citizens, nevertheless, and their 

 methods are perfectly normal and scrutable. The wonder- 

 mongers are the reporters, not the plant-breeders. 



It is a curious psychological phenomenon that the popu- 

 lace, or a certain part of it, seems to lose its head now and 

 then. This phenomenon is not peculiar to politics. It 

 enters those domains that are compassed by fact and that 

 in ordinary times are dominated by common sense. 

 Plant-breeding has been seized of this sensationalism. 

 Newspapers, magazines, and books have spread the most 

 wonderful tales. The lay writers have at last awakened 

 to the fact that great progress is making in agricultural 

 subjects, and, with a fragmentary and superficial view 

 here and there, have written of the subjects with all the 

 enthusiasm and partiality of new discovery. We have 

 now in mind not only the inflated writing about plant- 

 breeding, which constitutes a regrettable contribution to 

 current horticultural literature, but also that general 

 tendency to exploit everything that is capable of high 

 coloring. The agricultural historian, when he takes ac- 

 count of the exploitations of the present day, will recall other 



