2 50 MAIZE 



CHAP. Shame! points out that these standards have been de- 



VT 



veloped and arranged by experienced growers, breeders, and 

 judges to such a degree that a sample which comes up to 

 these standards has been found (i) to give the best yield ; (2) 

 to have the greatest degree of vitality ; (3) to be the most 

 profitable seed to grow, and consequently (4) to command the 

 highest price as seed. It is recognized, however, that not 

 enough is yet known about the correlation of characters to say 

 that the standards are perfect. 



203. Desirable Characters for Breeding Ears. — A casual 

 glance at an ordinary harvested crop of maize ears conveys 

 but little idea of the degree of variation among them. It is 

 surprisingly difficult to find ten uniform ears in a heap of many 

 thousands from an ordinary crop. 



Much remains to be done in the thorough scientific study 

 of the maize plant to find out which visible characters are 

 associated (" correlated ") with the invisible characters to which 

 we owe yield and quality. That such visible characters 

 exist is well known among stock-breeders ; an experienced 

 dairyman buying a milch cow looks for one with a long, thin 

 tail, prominent "milk" veins, good udder, and with a certain 

 type of body and head. It is not probable that a thin tail has 

 any direct connection with the supply of milk, but experience 

 shows that a thin-tailed cow is usually a better milker than one 

 with a thick coarse tail. So with plants ; there are visible cha- 

 racters which may be correlated with the invisible. Experience 

 shows that certain characters of the ears are in certain breeds 

 associated with heavy yields. A study of these correlations 

 has led to the framing of score cards for judging. 



204. South African Score Card for Seed-maize. — The 

 following score card has been successfully used by the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture of the Union of South Africa. It has 

 been carefully prepared by comparing and testing the various 

 score cards in use in the United States. It differs from any 

 one of them in that greater stress is laid on weight of grain 

 per ear than on proportion of grain to cob ; it is the yield of 

 grain that is important, irrespective of the amount of cob. 



