SELECTING BEETS FOB SEED. 53 



money and property at his disposal could not think 

 of attempting. 



One need only read Darwin's work on the 

 selection of species to realize the wisdom of M. 

 Legras's method. A child, for example, resembles his 

 father and mother more than his grandfather and 

 grandmother. In other words, our own characteris- 

 tics are more pronounced in our own children than in 

 our grandchildren, and the further they are removed 

 from the original parent, the greater will be the differ- 

 ence between the progeny and the ancestor. True, 

 there is a constant tendency toward reversion; but this 

 is only a tendency and not an actuality unless contin- 

 ued through long periods of years. What rules can 

 be evolved from the animal kingdom must generally 

 apply to the vegetable; hence, the reason why it is 

 maintained, and has been frequently proved, that the 

 true and only method of selection with the view to seed 

 production is, that the seed comes directly from the 

 mothers that have been actually selected in the labo- 

 ratory. It is customary among seed growers to plant 

 the mothers selected the following spring, the seed 

 ibtained being not sold, but sown with a view to 

 obtain beets which furnish seed for the trade. Such 

 being the case, it becomes evident that all beets exist- 

 ing grown from seed supplied by dealers, with the 

 exception of M. Legras's, are grandchildren of selected 

 mothers. The new plan proposed was to sell seed 

 obtained from the beets selected in the laboratory. It 

 was difficult to put into practice, and at first, on the 

 Besny farm, there were only 50 or 60 acres devoted to 

 this special purpose. On the other hand, in 1896 the 

 yield of seed of one variety was 500,000 lbs. 



Physical Selection of Alothers. 



Preliminan' Remarks. — ^^'hen one attempts to 

 compare the physical attributes of mothers and their 



