l 
Practice of Plant Breeding 
potato is even 100 years old, but there is still the 
probability that they do begin to grow aged and en- 
feebled, so that new varieties raised from seed will be 
required to replace them. 
It is usual in England to get seed tubers from Scot- 
land ; even in Scotland some growers obtain their seed 
from high, cold, and late districts. Such seed potatoes 
are supposed to be more hardy than those raised in 
England. 
It is possible that the “Fife” wheat which comes 
from Canada owes some of its splendid qualities to the 
severe climate conditions under which it originated, 
The history of this variety is very remarkable; a 
Scotchman (David Fife, in Ontario, Canada) obtained 
some Dantzig wheat from Glasgow. Only three ears, 
the produce of a single grain, ripened, but the splendid 
Canadian harvest of 1908 (11,375,000 quarters) seems 
to be almost wholly descended from that one seed. 
Not only so, but it is this same Fife wheat which is 
relied upon to save the situation in England. 
It is thought that the Fife wheat is not a Dantzig 
race, but due to a grain or two of Galician wheat which 
had got in by accident.® 
1 De Vries. 2 Zavitz. 3 Arthur. 
* Liebscher and Van Seelhorst. 5 Jones. ® Engler, Cieslar. 
7 Erwin Smith. ® Buttenshaw. ® Morris. 
10 Malinvaud. 2 Druery. 12 Erwin Smith, 
13 Salmon, Biffen 14 Klebs. 15 Humphries, 
294 
