PRACTICAL INFERENCES. 



and especially by selecting forms which observation 

 would show are specially suited to a particular locality. 

 Thus Rivett's red wheat produced at Rothamsted, on an 

 average of eight years, fifty-three bushels of grain per 

 acre, while Hallett's original red, grown under the same 

 conditions, yielded only thirty-six bushels. 



Change of Seed. This is a practice followed with ad- 

 vantage by both gardener and farmer, for it is found that 

 the crop is improved when seed even of the same variety 

 is obtained from a distance where it has been grown 

 under different conditions of soil and climate. In such 

 cases it is better, where possible, to select seed grown on 

 a poorer soil and under more unfavorable conditions than 

 obtain where it is proposed to sow. The increased vigor 

 and degree of fertility resulting from this process have 

 been commented on by Darwin. 



Cross Breeding by means of artificial fertilization 

 is an operation not so much within the power of an 

 ordinary agriculturist, owing to the delicacy of manipu- 

 lation and length of time required to ensure results worth 

 having. Such experiments would be better accomplished 

 in the laboratory or experimental garden of the professed 

 physiologist. The experiments carried out by Andrew 

 Knight, Maund, and Sheriff, in the case of wheat and 

 oats are, however, encouraging. "When undertaken for 

 practical purposes, it is specially desirable that mere hap- 

 hazard crosses should not be encouraged, much less made 

 purposely, but that a definite object should be pursued 

 in a definite manner. The experimenter should set him- 

 self to work to endeavor to produce an earlier, a hardier, 

 a more prolific variety, as the case may be, selecting for 

 his purpose such varieties to breed from as he has ascer- 

 tained by experience to be of such a nature as likely to 

 yield promising results. It is not possible to give detailed 



