IMPROVEMENT OF SEEDS AND SEED GRAINS. 
; I have seen the difference in the crops from soil treated that way in the case of 
soja beans—on the untreated soil giving crops 12 inches high, and on the soil after 
inoculation giving crops 32 inches high. The field that gave the poor crop, after being 
sown with three bags of soil from the good field, gave an excellent, heavy crop. The 
wonderful power of these soil bacteria is only beginning to be known, although the 
fact itself has been in existence since the world, as we now know it, began. 
By Mr. Ross (Ontario): 
Q. Can you see these bacteria? = 
A. Under the microscope only. On clover .and beans, however, you can see the 
tubercles or small wart-like growths produced by the bacteria. The bacteria are be- 
lieved to grow as little filaments into the rootlets, and then begin to make the nodule 
or tubercle—a little thing sometimes as big as a pin head and sometimes as big as a 
pea; you can split these open with a knife or your thumbnail; they contain soft matter 
almost like proud flesh, but that is not the bacteria. 
Q. Have the bacteria any particular shape or form? 
A. Sometimes they are round and some are in the form of rods. As I have just 
mentioned, an eminent French chemist, Bertholet, has found one that can take the 
nitrogen from the air into the soil without the interposition of the plant. He has been 
able to find as much as 980 pounds of nitrogen per acre fixed under laboratory condi- 
tions. 
THE CHARACTER OF SEEDS. ; 
I will now speak of the power of the individual plant to first of all take in, then 
to absorb and then to assimilate the food it gets prepared in that way. There are in 
- plants again two processes of increase. I have spoken of the process of nutrition 
being by three stages. There are two processes of increase in plants, the increase that 
makes for the enlargement, the maturity of the parts of the plant that die—the root, 
the stem and the leaves, parts that die utterly at the end of the plant’s life; and also 
the process that makes for the increase in the size and maturity of the seed part of 
the plant, that does not die at the end of the plant’s life, but which carries the life over - 
into the next generation. The seed that carries the life over is itself a tiny, an embryo, 
plant, and a store of food. In some seeds you can, by having them softened and 
swollen a little, almost see the beginning of the plant itself in the embryo and the store 
of food close by ready for the nourishment of the young plant when it starts to grow 
and before it is quite vigorous enough to get nourishment through its roots and leaves. 
If the embryo is imperfectly formed or weak it cannot thrive well; therefore, any 
seed that is only partially ripe, not wholly matured, is a poor kind of seed to sow on 
land. You know that is the condition of frosted wheat and frosted oats and all that. 
If the seed is not completed by perfect maturing and ripening, you have a poor seed 
even if it is of a highly priced sort. If the seed be very small for the variety, there is 
apt to be only a partial store of food close to the young plant when it is beginning its 
life. That is why a very small potato set is a mistake. If you have a very small 
set there ig not enough to nourish the potato until the roots and leaves increase 
enough to take in its own nourishment. A seed has to be considered both in regard to 
its maturity, and its size for the variety. The selection of seed does not receive any- 
think like the care that it should, or would if farmers knew the meaning of these 
things of which I have spoken—the preparation of the food within the soil and the 
ability of the individual plant to get hold of that food and make good use of it. A good 
mauy farmers buy whatever seed is cheapest and trust to luck. That is the straightest 
road to failure a man can follow. 
ON THE BUYING OF GRASS AND CLOVER SEEDS. 
May I.suy only a few words about other things to consider in buying or procuring 
seeds? First of all one has to see that the seeds are genuine and what they are represented 
to be. Then one has to see that the seeds are pure, because it is not an uncommon oc- 
currence at this time or in Canada, for a farmer to buy grass or clover seeds and find 
that he has seeded down his farm te weeds of the most pernicious and persistent sort. 
