36 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 
degree of this uniformity is regarded as the measure of the purity 
of the strain. With corn, conditions are different. It is normally 
interbred and normally exhibits considerable diversity in conspicuous 
characteristics—diversities difficult to suppress even when the closest 
selection 1s practiced. 
UNIFORMITY NOT ESSENTIAL IN CORN. 
In the cultivation of many plants varietal uniformity is a prime 
requisite, and with plants where seed is not the part for which the 
crop is grown this uniformity may be secured by narrow inbreeding 
and narrow selection, without imminent danger of deterioration. 
With many plants a reduction in the quantity of seed or in its germi- 
nating power is of relatively small importance. Close breeding may 
be necessary and permissible in such crops as beets, cabbage, lettuce, 
or tobacco, where uniformity 1n vegetative characteristics 1s required. 
It may be profitable to produce uniform varieties of chickens, dogs, 
or ornamental plants, even though such varieties may be short hved. 
But the fancier’s methods are not applicable to field crops. The corn 
grower receives a relatively small part of his profits in the form of 
prizes awarded on the score-card method of “ point ratings,” yet, 
except for the seedsman, this is the only monetary advantage in pro- 
ducing corn with perfectly uniform ears. That a corn planter should 
occasionally drop four or five grains instead of three in a hill is about 
the only reason that can be given for insisting upon uniformity in 
shape and size of kernels, and an occasional white speck in the yellow 
corn meal is advanced as sufficient warrant for the careful elimina-. 
tion from yellow varieties of all ears with white cobs. The desire 
for uniformity does not always have even these excuses. It is even 
urged by some breeders that the tassels and silk must be uniform in 
color, that the ears must be uniform in shape, with a fixed number 
of grains to the inch. There is not even a fancied pecuniary ad- 
vantage in this, but it is held that diversity in even these unessential 
characteristics stamps a variety as mongrel and therefore undesirable. 
Even the universal insistence upon large ears may not always be 
advisable, for it has resulted in the development of plants bearing 
single ears instead of the two or more ears that are normal to the 
species. Where the season is short the limitation to a single ear is a 
decided advantage, but under other conditions a plant producing two 
or three ears of moderate size may yield a quantity of shelled corn 
that sufficiently exceeds that on a single large ear to more than offset 
the additional cost of harvesting. 
CONFUSION REGARDING THE TERM UNIFORMITY. 
A misunderstanding regarding the meaning of the term uniform- 
ity has done much to spread the practice of inbreeding and has 
ely 
