SOILS FOK SEED PEODUCTION. 131 



Sowing of Seed for Mothers. 



This question of sowing seed for mothers should 

 in reaHty be discussed from many points of view, for 

 there are numerous kinds of mothers to be consid- 

 eied. If the question of beet-seed production is taken 

 up from the start, then the seed must be purchased 

 elsewhere; thus the sowing would be of one variety. 

 After mothers are selected and the first crop of seed 

 has been obtained from them, there are many dif- 

 ferent systems of sowing. We refer not only to spac- 

 ing, but to the distance between the lines; the Elite are 

 kept much closer together than those roots which 

 have been analyzed, but yield, say 15 per cent, sugar, 

 and which are to furnish seed for the beets only after 

 the third year. On the other hand, the Elite, on which 

 the seed producer centres his attention, demands spe- 

 cial care, not only in the manner in which the hand 

 sowing is done, but during every stage of the plants' 

 development; open spaces, etc., are most care- 

 fully avoided. 



Upon general principles, better results are 

 obtained by hand sowing than is possible through the 

 careful use of a seed drill; the spacing can be made 

 almost mathematical. Those roots that are raised in 

 the general field from purchased seed, or from seed 

 of all kinds that has been produced on the farm, 

 which are separated from the rest, should never be 

 included in the observations for physical or chemical 

 selection. Their conditions of development being 

 different, would lead to poor results as the work pro- 

 gressed in the creation of a special type. The square 

 method of sowing, consequently, has greater advan- 

 tages over beets cultivated in rows, where their spac- 

 ing is. not the same as the distance between rows ; the 

 misses then (by square methods) have not the same 

 importance, for the roots are all absorbing from the 

 soil about the same amount of plant food. In France, 



