176 INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY 
To do successful work in plant breeding, one of the first 
requisites is trained observation — ability to recognize the ap- 
pearance of any valuable character or group of characters in 
growing plants. A skilled botanist once found twenty-three 
kinds of wheat growing in a field where the grain was sup- 
posed to be all alike. One of these kinds was isolated and 
became the parent of an excellent variety that has been ex- 
tensively cultivated for about a century. 
The Concord grape sprang from a seed- 
ling of one of the common wild grapes of 
New England. Its originator failed to get 
another important new variety from among 
22,000 seedlings that grew from Concord 
seeds. One of the most valuable black- 
berries of the low-growing (dewberry) type, 
the Lucretia, is a variety found grow- 
ing wild upon a West Virginia plantation 
during the Civil War. The well-known 
Wealthy apple originated as a seedling 
discovered after ten years of seed planting 
Fie. 154. Effect of and the use of much more than a bushel 
cultivation on the of apple seeds. 
nae oo a 167. The perpetuation of desirable varie- 
left is a cultivatea ties. In the case of shrubs or trees which 
ones thatat ig ee can. readily be grafted or budded (sect. 87), 
of the first season’s OF in plants like the potato, the canna, or 
growth. One eighth the gladiolus, which can be propagated by 
natural size Aree 
tubers and bulbs, it is easy to perpetuate 
any new variety. If it is necessary to reproduce the plant 
by means of seed, it may be found that the desired variety 
always “comes true”; that is, reproduces itself with little 
or no perceptible change, as is the case with the established 
varieties of the grains (sect. 171). On the other hand, the 
plants may tend to “run out”; that is, to revert to the aver- 
age original type from which the selected variations have 
been developed. Sugar beets are particularly troublesome 
