ARID AGRICULTURE. 



231 



denced by the numerous breeds of fowls and pig- 

 eons, but outside of these there are probably none 

 which will bring forth more than twenty fold in 



a vear. 



SISCOVERV 

 OF SEX IN 

 FI^ANTS 



The underlying principles of any kind of 

 breeding have been known to man but a few 

 years. Sex in plants was known to the ancients, 

 and the doctrine that plants are of different 

 sexes seems to have been entertained even among 

 the original Greeks. Several Greek writers di- 

 vide plants into male and female, but as Loudon 

 points out, their conception was based on erro- 

 neous observations of habit, and the significance 

 of sex was not understood. The real discovery 

 of sex in plants seems to have been made by 

 Cameraria in the last years of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, but Bailey states that "The true signifi- 

 cance of sex in plants was first clearly conceived 

 bv Hofmeister in 18-10." 



FKANT 

 BREEDIira 

 IS NEW 



We have no indications in ancient writing 

 of true plant breeding. In the parable of the 

 sower is this sentence, "And they fell on good 

 ground and did yield fruit and spring up and in- 

 creased and brought forth some fifty and some 

 sixty and some an hundred fold." It is prob- 

 able that the productiveness of plants in earlier 

 times was supposed to be due entirely to the pro- 

 ductiveness of the soil, and to outside conditions, 



