191 



" We know that propagation from cuttings will produce plants muck 

 truer to their mother species than those grown from seed. This is ex- 

 ceptionally true of those plants that can be grown in either way. As r 

 for example, all fruit trees are budded, potatoes are grown from the 

 eyes of the potato, not from the seed, and in the last few years when 

 tropical cane seeds have been secured many distinctly different plants 

 were, according to Professors Bovell and Harrison, grown from one 

 parent seed head. Beet investigators, also, realising this fact, have been 

 making experiments in growing beets from what are practically cuttings, 

 instead of from seed as heretofore, though their work is being done to 

 preserve true varieties rather than to have any immediate effect upon 

 the sucrose content. Then, having accepted the fact that cuttings breed 

 truer to the parent than seeds, is not the conviction forced upon us that 

 an improvement inherent in the plant can be developed more quickly in 

 cane than in seed producing sugar plants. I do not mean by this that 

 large quantities of a pure stock could be secured more quickly, for I have 

 already explained why this cannot be done, but that with an equal num- 

 ber of stalks a plant true to its parent stock will reach its maximum suc- 

 rose content sooner, and breeding only from the best, we are more apt to 

 get the best. We will not have to contend with the difficulty of variation 

 from our accepted best value. It is, also, doubtless true from the same 

 reason that we are more limited in our ultimate improvement since we 

 cannot expect accidental variations that will be of more value than their 

 original parent. We cannot, either, secure any of the benefits of cross- 

 ing that are obtained from seed bearers. That there are occasional va- 

 riations, however, anyone familiar with the investigations of naturalists 

 of the present day cannot very well doubt ; indeed some have actually 

 been observed in ordinary culture, and are now being grown at the 

 Sugar Station in this State, but it cannot be hoped even by an extreme 

 visionist in natural selection that there would be much betterment in 

 cane by watching for such variations. My own work, no further than 

 it has gone, has led me much against my will to fear that the chanee 

 for continued improvement from single stalk selection is not as great 

 as could be desired. I do not find nearly the variation in the plats 

 which have already been subjected to one selection that I did in my 

 original selection from the field. Where the first year the difference 

 in per cent, solids of the two plats planted was 2 '2, the selections gave 

 but slight individual variations in either plat, and they were in each 

 case practically the same number of canes examined. All the canes 

 from the high sucrose plats were correspondingly high and those from 

 the poor plat correspondingly poor. There was not in the rich plat a 

 single stalk that I could think was distinctively richer than its associates 

 from any quality in itself ; in fact, there were none at all that were 

 markedly superior canes to those adjoining them. I do not think the 

 same reasoning could be held as good in regard to the cane from poor 

 sucrose seed, as some single cane might be unusually low in sugar from 

 an accidental cause, such as becoming wounded during cultivation, 

 &c 



"It is my belief, then, that with a given amount of plants the 

 improvement in sugar cane by seed selection will be more stable than 

 in sorghum or beets, and will, on the whole, approach its maximum 

 more rapidly, but that the limitations to its ultimate improvement are 



