INTRODUCTION 289 
breeders of agricultural crop plants. Three of these worked with grains 
and two with fruits. John Le Couteur, during the early part of the last 
century, was raising what he supposed were pure and uniform varieties 
of wheat, when Professor La Gasca of the University of Madrid, after 
examining one of his fields, pointed out 23 distinct forms. This was the 
beginning of Le Couteur’s collection of 150 varieties of wheat, some of 
which were introduced to the trade. One of them, “Bellevue de Tala- 
vera,” is still known as a pure and uniform variety. De Vries points 
out that Le Couteur simply assumed that the progeny of his selected 
plants would be like the parents and experience justified the assumption. 
Thus be became the first to discover the importance of selecting in- 
dividual plants in the improvement of cereals. 
Patrick Shirreff was also celebrated about the middle of the century 
as a breeder of cereals. His method differed from that of Le Couteur 
only in that he searched for very exceptional plants as the starting points 
of new varieties. During his lifetime he discovered seven new varieties, 
which according to Darwin, were grown extensively in Great Britain, 
but only four of them had permanent value. He also proceeded on the 
assumption that his single selected plants would breed true and each did 
so. According to de Vries, he considered the occasional appearance of a 
distinctly superior plant as merely accidental. 
Frederic F. Hallet, like Le Couteur and Shirreff, practised the rigid 
selection of individual plants in breeding wheat. Although he proceeded 
on the theory that by choosing the best spike on a certain plant and the 
best grain in the spike he would obtain corresponding improvement in 
the variety, yet he did not rely on mere apparent superiority, but tested 
each grain on each spike. He then selected the finest plant of all. He 
began his work in 1857 and made important introductions during the 60’s. 
While Le Couteur and Shirreff assumed that the selection of a single 
plant was sufficient and thenceforth gave their attention to multiplying 
the new variety, Hallet practised continuous selection within his selected 
strains. He obtained considerable increase in yield as a result of his 
early selections but little or no increase due to continuous selection within 
pure strains. The success of these three pioneer wheat breeders was 
unquestionably due to the fact that they practised the isolation of pure 
lines some of which were superior to ordinary varieties. 
Charles Mason Hovey was the ‘‘father of the American strawberry.” 
As early as 1830 Hovey “had a list of 30 strawberries of his own origina- 
tion, all springing from the ‘‘Hovey,” which, together with ‘Boston 
Pine,” had been introduced a few years earlier. Hovey crossed a 
native American species with the imported “Pine” variety, which is 
supposed to have sprung from the beach or sand strawberry of the Pacific 
Coast some years after its introduction into Europe. Some of Hovey’s 
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