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bility ; in other words, amongst which there can, for a great 

 number of genetic factors be found individuals or types having 

 them and öthers without them. 



Such is the case with maize, with the horse, wheat, dogs 

 peas and swine, sheep and poultry. Let us examine wheat, wich 

 is next to the dog perhaps the best example. Among the 

 fourteenhundred pure types of wheat in the collection öf the seed- 

 firm Vilmorin-Andrieux, there are only a few more than 

 a dozen which can be profitably grown around Paris. All the 

 others have combinations of factors which make, that under the 

 cunditions under which wheat is grown here, they can not 

 compete with the first dozen. But this does not mean that these 

 few varieties of wheat are therefore the best generally. They 

 are simply the most profitable here. The individual adaptation of 

 all the other types and a little study as to some special condi- 

 tions they may require, suffice to make it possible that they are 

 all grown at Verrieres. It would be possible among such a 

 collection to find wheats, which there are only kept for curiositys 

 sake, but which would be excellent in some other part of the 

 world, with a longer or shorter season, with a greater or lesser 

 rainfall ; with an abnormally wet or very severe winter, or with 

 an exceptionally hot summer. A combination of genetic factors 

 which in France or in Sweden gives undesirable characters, may 

 in Thibet or in New South Wales prove to be just the thing 

 required. Thus may long glumes be looked upon as undesirable 

 in countries where they have no use whatever, and only serve 

 to heighten the chance to catch rust or smutspores, whereas in 

 countries with an excessively hot summer like Thibet or Okla- 

 homa long glumes may protect the young grains from the withering 

 effect of hot winds. In countries with a rainfall limited to one 

 season like California ; it will be necessary to choose amongst 

 rapidly-stocking suinmerwheats, which would in Western Europe 

 be unable to compete whith slow-growing winterwheats. 



Sometimes there are very special conditions under which 

 it would seem impossible to grow wheat, and it is something 

 astonishing to see how some varieties can under them give a 

 paying crop. Thus there exists a variety ; „hätif de la Saone" 

 which can be grown on land standing under water for weeks 

 at the time. This is again a good instance of the relative cost 

 of the manipulating of the genetic Constitution, and the mani- 



