IMPROVEMENT OF WHEAT BY SELECTION “81 
field conditions their yield fell to that of the original 
ancestors, and it was seen that the scheme was a failure. 
Hallett’s work was of high importance, and the publicity 
it received was of the greatest value, for it proved to all 
plant breeders that environmental improvement is not 
hereditary. 
During the whole of the 19th century wheat selection 
was ardently pursued in Germany by a group of breeders 
usually associated with the name of Rimpau, one of their 
leaders. Their plan was almost exactly that followed by 
breeders of cattle and sheep. They went into the fields 
and gathered a number of the best heads of any variety. 
These heads they threshed, and then they sowed the 
resulting grain in a single plot. Through this plot they 
went again at harvest time and picked out the best heads 
once more, and continued to do so, in many cases for a 
score of years on end. But they always mixed the seed 
from all their best heads and sowed the product together. 
Some improvements were made by this process of ‘‘mass 
selection,’’ which indeed became the starting point of the 
work at Svalof in 1886. 
Wheats are normally self-fertilized, so that a pure 
strain tends to remain pure for long periods. They can, 
however, be artificially cross-fertilized, and this plan has 
been adopted to produce new varieties combining the 
outstanding good qualities of different parents. One of 
the most famous cross breeders of wheat was William 
Ferrar who, working in New South Wales from 1906 
onwards, produced Bobs, Federation, and other crosses 
which have revolutionized wheat growing in Australia, 
On the re-discovery of Mendel’s law of Inheritance, in 
1899, great hopes were entertained that a new era had 
dawned and that practically any number of excellent 
characters would be able to be combined in a single 
wheat. 
Biffen, of Cambridge, England, has worked most 
