94 WHEAT PRODUCTION IN NEW ZEALAND 
No reports were asked from growers after the harvest 
of 1917, as the majority of them had obtained their seed 
from other farmers and so were not in direct correspon- 
dence with the College, but general remarks, and the 
experiments in our own plots show that the strain exhibits 
no sign of deterioration. 
It is estimated that the result of the whole of the 
trials shows that College Hunter’s is 4 bushels per acre 
better than the commercial sample. Such a degree of 
superiority is of great importance as the following con- 
sideration shows:—-The average area under wheat 
during the 10 years before the war was 233,000 acres. 
and the average price was 3s. 4d. per bushel. Four 
bushels per acre additional on that area and at that price 
comes to £150,000. This will be the annual gain to the 
country if, other things being equal, a similar improve- 
ment to that achieved in Hunter’s is extended to the other 
commonly grown varieties. Again, on the farm at Lincoln 
College the yield during the past 10 years has been 45 
bushels per acre, and in normal times the cost of pro- 
duction is covered by a return of 36 bushels per acre, 
leaving 9 bushels per acre as profit. An increase of 4 
bushels per acre through using better seed represents 
an inerease of only nine per cent. in the yield but 
an increase of over 44 per cent. in the profits. Small 
increases in yield are therefore of great importance, and 
it is to discover and verify even small increases that the 
elaborate experimental work above detailed becomes 
necessary. 
7. Further Work in Hand. 
The original selection of the heads of Hunter’s in 1910, 
and the further trials of those selections did not of course 
complete the work with that variety. It was not con- 
sidered as proved that a favourable selection had been 
made until after 5 years of trial, and in the meantime 
50 new selections were made each year, in case the earliest 
