BIOLOGY OF AGKICULTURAL PRODUCTION 93 



Agricultural efficiency. Wherever possible let each member 

 of the class choose some local plant or animal industry and 

 c ollect records, establish working standards, and figure out the 

 local percentage of efficiency. This might well form the main 

 thesis work of the year, and, in a community in which agricul- 

 ture is important, by distributing theses to cover the different 

 crops we may make this work contribute to civic advancement. 

 A recent estimate by Emerson yields the following results : 



STANDARDS AND PERCENTAGE OF EFFICIENCY FOR 

 FOLLOWING CROPS 



The standard of 500 bushels of potatoes per acre is ad- 

 mittedly low. By the mere addition of brains (" cultivated 

 thought ") to breeding and selection of variety, and scientific 

 precision in fertilizers and culture methods, this standard 

 ] night be raised to 1000 bushels, possibly, without increasing 

 per-acre cost of operation, except to pick up the additional 

 -~>00 bushels. Probably Lord Rosebery holds the world's 

 record : 2053 bushels of potatoes 1754 marketable and 299 

 bushels of culls per acre. With the standard at 2000 bushels 

 our scale of efficiency falls to 4| per cent. 



Hills of potatoes vary remarkably in the same field, and 

 beginnings have been made in " hill selection " of seed on this 

 account. Tubers planted from strong hills have thus been 

 Jbund to yield as high as sixteen times as many pounds as 



1 Data obtained elsewhere. 



