SEEDS AND SEED GROWING. 



61 



head sprouts the effect has sometimes been to lengthen the 

 stem at the expense of the head, until the seed stock becomes run 

 out entirely and is in effect no longer true modern cabbage seed, 

 since it has partly reverted to the original type. An instance of 

 this occurred in a neighborhood in Nova Scotia where, for the 

 sake of econom,y for a number of years cabbage seed was grown 

 by cutting off the heads and planting out the stumps only until 

 the stems became nearly two feet long and the heads not much 

 bigger than twice the size of a man's fist. 



The practice of soioing the seed from plants remaining in 

 the garden after the hest specimens have deen gathered for 

 home use, as often happens, is a very poor one. Under such 

 treatment there is a very general tendency for the stock to 

 degenerate. Where seed is to be saved in a mixed garden, a few 

 hills of plants should be allowed to go to seed for this special 

 purpose, without being picked at all. It is very important to 

 save seed from well ripened fruits Very immature seeds will 

 often grow but they give a weak though perhaps very early 

 maturing plant and are very liable to disease. According to 

 Professor Arthur, it is not the slightly unripe seeds that give a 

 noticeable increase in earliness but very unripe seeds gathered 

 from fruit (tomatoes) scarcely of full size and still very green. 

 Such seeds weigh scarcely more than two-thirds as much as 

 those fully ripe; they grow readily but lack constitutional vigor. 

 Professor E. S. Goff has made a great number of experiments 

 along this line and remarks that the increase in earliness in 

 tomatoes following the use of very immature seeds, "is accom- 

 panied by a marked decrease in the vigor of the plant and in the 

 size, firmness and keeping quality of the fruit.'* 



A few years of careful observation and experience in follow- 

 ing out these principles in the breeding of plants with a special 

 object in view, will convince the most skeptical of the wonderful 

 power which man possesses to adapt plants to his needs. 



Cross and Self-pollination of Plants— The fiowers of plants 

 are said to be either ^elf-pollenized or crossed. By self-pollina- 

 tion is meant the pollination of the female organ (pistil) 

 by the male element (pollen) of the same fiower or, in some 

 cases of the same plant but different flowers as in corn and 



