ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 233 



or otherwise undesirable, should be allowed to mature pollen. Detassel- 

 mg is accomplished by going over the rows two or three times and care- 

 fully pulling out the tassels as they appear. 



Occasionally an entire row is detasseled because of the general in- 

 feriority of the row as a whole. 



Field Selections Based on Performance Records. 



As the corn crop approaches maturity we are then ready for the first 

 time to begin at the real beginning in the selection of seed corn; that it, 

 with the whole corn crop and the whole corn plant, as it stands in the 

 field. 



We then make our first selection of seed corn from the field rows 

 (each of which is the progeny of a separate single ear) on the basis of 

 performance record. Each of the twenty detasseled rows is carefully 

 examined. Some of them are discarded for seed purposes by simple 

 inspection, and with some rows this decision may be made early in the 

 growing season; because, when each field row is planted from a separate 

 individual ear, that row has an individuality which in many cases is very 

 marked. It may show very imperfect germination (in the most careful 

 work the germinating power of each ear is ascertained before planting), 

 it may be of slow growth, produce small, weak plants, or numerous barreii 

 stalks. The plants may be tall and slender or very thick and short. In 

 one row the ears may be borne high on the stalks, while in the adjoining 

 row they may average one or two feet nearer the ground. One row may 

 yield more than twice as much corn as an adjoining row on the same 

 kind of soil. As a matter of fact, when one begins to breed corn by the 

 row system (one seed ear to each row) he is usually surprised to find that 

 the plants in some rows are so very different from those in others, as will 

 be seen from data from one of our 1901 breeding plots, which are given 

 in table 4. 



