KEQUIR£K£NTS OF SUGAR BEET SEED. 29 



It is only in very exceptional cases that the seed 

 ^ower with his Nos. i, 2, etc., good, better and best, 

 can continue to create under like conditions; it may, 

 for example, be admitted that Mr. A's elongated yel- 

 low top, averaging 14 per cent, sugar and giving a 

 yield of eighteen tons to the acre, has actually existed, 

 and that there is unlimited evidence to prove that A's 

 assertions can be relied upon. Unfortunately, how- 

 ever, the patch devoted this year to mothers of type No. 

 2 is not the same as previously. The conditions not 

 oeing the same, on account of the variance in composi- 

 tion of the fertilizer between one patch and another, the 

 seed obtained will no longer be the same as in previous 

 years, and therefore cannot be called No. 2. Alas! what- 

 ever might have been the conditions in the beginning, 

 they are no longer true as soon as new elements enter 

 to modify the environment. These difficulties will 

 continue to exist as long as the many-variety system 

 of seed growing continues. Purchasers will receive 

 for their money hybrids of the original types. One 

 need only visit the beet-seed plantations coming under 

 the writer's notice to appreciate the ignorance and 

 mistakes on the one hand, and the intelligence and 

 exact science on the other. A botanical principle that 

 seems too frequently forgotten is, that when two plants 

 of the same family, one of a superior and the other of 

 an inferior variety, are cultivated side by side, or within 

 reasonable limits of each other, the ultimate effect is 

 that the types are altered; the new creation will be of 

 a lower variety than those previously existing. Hence^ 

 How can a seed grower, from a rational standpoint, 

 hope to create a reliable kind of beet seed when his 

 methods of production depend upon so many variable 

 conditions? From what has been said in the foregoing, 

 success for quality means constancy of conditions, 

 within reasonable limits. 



Those methods of seed production depending 



