256 



THE WHEAT CULTUEIST. 



to the improvement of his wheat that he is when he 

 undertakes to improve his domestic animals bj breed 

 ing from mongrels or from grade stock. It is well un- 

 derstood that such animals — grades and mongrels — ■ 

 when employed as breeders, never transmit the excel- 

 lent points of desirable form and symmetry to then* off- 

 spring with reliable certainty, while pure-bred animals 

 never fail in this respect. 



The same facts hold good in the vegetable kingdom, 

 with seed wheat in particular. When different varie- 

 ties are sown in close proximity, and the product, which 

 will be an impure grain, is agfiin employed for seed, a 

 pm-e variety of choice wheat may be run out most effect- 

 ually in a few years, so that intelligent farmers who 

 were only suj)erficial observers would be ready to affirm, 

 without any hesitancy, that wheat does degenerate. 

 The cause of degeneracy, and the remedy, may all be 

 expressed in a few words. We have hinted at the cause, 

 namely : sowing different varieties near each other, so 

 that the grain will hybridize; thrashing several kinds 

 together, and continuing to employ such grain for seed 

 from year to year. Herein lies the whole secret of the 

 degeneracy of varieties. If a pure variety be kept by 

 itself with suitable care, and cultivated on good ground, 

 and the grain never thrashed ^vith other wheat, the pu- 

 rity of a variety of wheat, with all its excellent charac- 

 teristics, may be maintained intact as long as wheat 

 may be cultivated. There is no uncertainty about this 

 suggestion. The idea is in perfect keeping with the 

 established laws of vegetable physiology. Cultivating 

 any variety of grain in a slip-shod, slack, and perfunc- 

 tory manner, will cause the best variety of wheat the 

 world ever knew to degenerate and run completely out 



