Proceedixgs of the Farmers' Club. 449 



commenced improvements in the seed for the future crop. There 

 seems to be a concentration of the energies of certain plants to 

 develop a more perfect variety. Instead of deterioration, nature's 

 efforts always tend to more complete development. There is an ear 

 of wheat, for example, or of barley, or rye, or a piuicle of oats, each of 

 which is earlier, larger, phi mper, and fairer than the ears all around it. 

 If allowed to grow until the crop is fully ripe, these seed heads will 

 be dead ripe, and in some instances will have fallen to the ground. 

 The largest and best kernels of those heads have been developed by 

 an effort of nature with direct reference to the production of a thor- 

 oughbred variety of grain ;' and if those ears be gathered with care, 

 and the seed planted in a congenial soil, and all bastard heads be 

 culled out for a few seasons, and an effort be made to establish a 

 variety of grain with unusually large heads and plump kernels, pos- 

 sessing the important characteristic of great prolificacy, the efforts of 

 the tiller of the soil will be so consonant with the laws of the vege- 

 table kingdom that he will have the satisfaction of seeing not only 

 two ears of fine grain appearing, where now only one is produced, 

 but they will be much larger, heavier, and far better in every respect 

 than the miserably inferior seed that is relied upon for the crops of 

 our country. American farmers lack faith in the production of tlior- 

 oughbred seed of any kind. They continue to plow and sow, reap 

 and*mow, in that same old channel where their fathers trod, when, 

 with a little care in raising better seed, their crops of all kinds might 

 he doubled. A few thoroughbred varieties of wheat might be made 

 to work as great changes in tlie production of cereal grain through- 

 out the grain producing districts as have been wrought by the intro- 

 duction of thoroughbred Durham stock. But our farmers have 

 not availed themselves of one-half the advantages which might 

 have been derived from the introduction of such thoroughbred 

 stock among our herds. And the same is true of all kinds 

 of grain. If a choice variety of wheat or oats be intro- 

 duced, the system of management is so imperfect that in less than 

 foiir years the variety "will have lost its identity, simply because 

 proper efforts were not made every season to maintain the purity of 

 the thoroughbred variety. Where is the prolific variety of tlie pedi- 

 gree wheat, the ears of which were uniformly six inches in length,, 

 and all of a proportionate size, which woiild yield forty or fifty 

 bushels of beautiful grain per acre ? What lias become of the excel- 

 lent Treadwell wheat, a thoroughbred variety ? Where are a long 

 [Inst.] 29 



