Practice of Plant Breeding . 
Amongst others who have found the selection of the 
largest seeds to be an undoubted advantage are Arthur ® 
(with peas), and Liebscher and Van Seelhorst.* 
The heaviest seeds are not only most productive but 
are also, sometimes at least, the most vigorous and 
most enduring.’ Just the same result has been dis- 
covered in practical forestry. The finest and largest 
seeds produced the strongest and most vigorous trees,® 
so that the importance of this very simple principle is 
therefore manifest enough. . 
Other experiments have shown that very large and 
heavy potatoes produce descendants which inherit those 
“valuable characters. That was the result obtained by 
Van Seelhorst between 1898 and 1903. 
There was a short time ago a crisis in the history of 
Sea Island cotton in the United States. Some mysterious 
disease suddenly increased and destroyed whole fields 
of cotton. Some of the very best land seemed to be 
hopelessly affected, and it looked as if the whole industry 
would be destroyed. 
A minute fungus which infested the soil was the 
author of this trouble. Mr.W.A. Orton was sent down 
to the cotton-fields to try and deal with the situation. 
He discovered here and there some individual stalwart 
cotton plant which bore fruit in spite of the Fusarium 
fungus. From their descendants he established a race 
of Sea Island cotton which defied its attacks,’ 
Disease-proof pine-apples have also been obtained 
and quite in the same way. 
Other valuable plants obtained in this simple manner 
are the thornless oranges, violets with an enormous 
number of flowers, and beetroots and sugar-canes with 
a very high percentage of sugar contents.° 
The most remarkable of all known cases of selection 
is perhaps that of the seven-leaved clover. The cele- 
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