PLANT- 
55 BREEDING 
we are learning that the same holds good with 
plants, and that the farmer who keeps the 
small potatoes for seed will produce poorer 
potatoes than he ought to have. 
The other day I found a farmer harvesting 
a measly lot of corn. “ Where did you get that 
seed?” I asked. “Oh,” he said, “I picked it 
up ’most anywhere.” I could have told him 
that myself without asking. 
Selection and breeding are not the work of 
experts alone, for any one who gains the simple 
knowledge that enables him to recognize the 
plant or crop that resists prevailing diseases and 
flourishes best under his conditions, needs only 
to preserve the seed of such plants for propa- 
gating. Cross-breeding, on the contrary, is ex- 
pert work, but new strains may be secured by 
straight selection of individual plants, and this 
gives enormous results. If one persistently 
saves the seeds of those plants that best serve 
his purpose, he will soon have crops that are 
superior to any that he had before. The pro- 
cess is so simple that anybody can do it. We 
have talked for years of the “survival of the 
fittest,’ and this is but helping the best to beat 
the poorer ones. 
What causes the variations that make selection 
possible nobody yet knows; but we do know 
