2^4 MAINE AGRICUIvTURAI, EXPERIMENT STATION. 191O. 



system. The average condition of a row (on the ear-to-row 

 system of planting) is in some degree an index of the genotypic 

 condition of the parent ear. Or, in other words, it is an indi- 

 cation of what it is worth as a breeder or propagator, as distin- 

 guished from what it is worth merely as an ear. 



All this has its bearing on the current tendency to exploit 

 fancy seed ears as such, of which we are seeing so much. The 

 man who pays $250.00 for a single ear of seed corn (which by 

 hypothesis he himself did not raise on some kind of a pedigree 

 system) has a most extraordinary degree of faith in his ability 

 to tell by the appearance of the ear what it wall produce. He 

 would do well to read and ponder over Mark Twain's tale of 

 the jumping frog. It- has a moral for every breeder, whether 

 of plants or animals. 



II. Farm Distribution Test. 

 In addition to the ear-to-row test in 1909 there was also car- 

 ried on an extensive trial of this corn on a practical scale. This 

 was done through a distribution of the seed to a number of 

 farmers located in different parts of the corn growing sections 

 of the State. As has already been noted, it was found that the 

 Type I corn grown in the 1908 ear-to-row test was very early, 

 as well as of fine quality. The question at once raised itself 

 as to whether this marked earliness was anything fixed or inher- 

 ent in the selected strains, or was merely the result of the favor- 

 able conditions of soil and cultivtion under which it was grown, 

 combined with a high degree of adaptation or adjustment of 

 the seed to those conditions. While on the Darwinian or 

 "gradual accumulation" theory of selection it would be absurd 

 to suppose that selection for one generation alone would bring 

 about and fix such a marked improvement in earliness as was 

 noted in the 1908 work, the '"isolation" or "genotypic"' concept 

 of the action of selection would lead to no such difficulty. That 

 is to say, on this latter interpretation a permanent (i. e., defi- 

 nitely fixed) improvement as great as that actually observed 

 is a quite possible result of a single generation of selection. 

 But, as a matter of fact, was the improvement in earliness 

 obtained actually fixed? It is obviously impossible to answer 

 this question definitely by continuing to grow the corn on the 

 same experimental plots at Farmington. Because if (as was 



