December, 1910.] 



535 



Miscellaneous, 



determine the varieties grown, though 

 in many eases it is certain from the 

 notes that the variety published on was 

 not true to name. There has thus beau 

 placed on record a mass of misinform- 

 ation regarding many varieties. In 

 my opinion, at least fifty per cent, of 

 the varieties that have been published 

 upon are either untrue to name or 

 unidentifiable. I hope I may not seem 

 to be pessimistic in portraying the pre- 

 sent status of much of the published in- 

 formation on crop varieties. It is the 

 natural result of neglect by men of 

 proper training to do accurately work of 

 a purely botanical character. As an 

 indirect result of this failure by botanists 

 to apply their trained skill to the 

 problems of agriculture, especially as 

 concerns knowledge of crop varieties, 

 there has arisen the idea that training 

 in systematic botany canuot be of parti- 

 cular assistance to agriculture. There- 

 fore, it has all but disappeared from the 

 coliege curricula at least in a form to 

 train students to know plants. Few 

 agronomists and horticulturists graduat- 

 ing to-day from our agricultural colleges 

 are well trained in botany; indeed, so 

 far as I know, no college is training 

 botanists to enter agricultural work, 

 excepting along pathological lines. 



I do not feel that I should be justified 

 in thus painting so gloomy a picture of 

 botany in relation to agriculture, if the 

 recent trend of things did not indicate 

 that better times were coming, indeed 

 are here. There was one field of work 

 that both botanists and agriculturists 

 entered upon in the course of their in- 

 vestigations that has brought them to- 

 gether, namely, plant breeding. It is a 

 happy coincidence that at practically 

 the same time the interests of all biolo- 

 gists has been stimulated to renewed in- 

 terest in the problems of variation and 

 heredity. The practical results already 

 obtained by plant breeders is an earnest 

 of what may reasonably be further ex- 

 pected. Incidentally but inevitably, 

 the work of the plant breeder has 

 stimulated interest in the matter of 

 existing crop varieties as well as in the 

 principles underlying variation and 

 heredity. Breeding is, after all, largely 

 the production of new varieties. Thus 

 far, breeders have used for the most 

 part locally established varieties as the 

 basis of the work. This is sound as far 

 as it goes, as the local varieties undoubt- 

 edly represent the best adapted of those 

 tried, the poorer sorts having been 

 discarded. It is safe to say, however, 

 that but a small per cent, of existent 

 varieties have been tried inmost places— 

 so that there may easily exist varieties 



superior at least in certain character- 

 istics. A realisation of this has led to 

 a clearer appreciation of the value of a 

 comprehensive study of the whole 

 botany of our principal crop plants. 

 This does not mean merely a categorical 

 list of existent varieties — which it is 

 evident can be indefinitely increased by 

 hybridising— but a sufficiently exhaus- 

 tive study, so that we may thoroughly 

 understand the characteristics, both 

 good and poor, that are available to the 

 breeder. The task is by no means an 

 easy opp. In the first place, the number 

 of varieties on all our crop plants is far 

 greater than has commonly been real- 

 ised. For example, there are probably 

 about 2.000 varieties of wheat, 1,000 of 

 beans, 5,000 of apples, 200 of sorghums, 

 etc. What is needed is not so much 

 descriptions and detailed classification 

 of these varieties, as a classification and 

 understanding of their principal here- 

 ditary characteristics. In other words, 

 the knowledge of them needs to be 

 arranged not only with regard to the 

 existing forms, but as far as possible 

 with regard to their characters and 

 potentialities. Such a monograph does 

 not exist for a single one of our principal 

 crops, though there is an increasing 

 number of contributions to the subject. 

 The field is a vast one in which there is 

 not only a great work to be done in com- 

 piling what is known of our cultivated 

 plants, but a greater one in clearing up 

 the many problems concerning their 

 origin. 



Iu a very different way plant breed- 

 ing is beginning to do much to better 

 agronomic methods. I have before 

 stated that the most accurate plot work 

 being done in this country is by the 

 plots devoted to fertility investigations. 

 How accurate are these ? Hall, of 

 Rothamsted, thinks no results with 

 fertilisers are at all trustworthy unless 

 the yield difference is at least 10 per 

 cent. In much of the American breed- 

 ing work going on 10 per cent, increase 

 by selection would be deemed good pro- 

 gress. The question is, can any feasible 

 system of trial plots measure accurately 

 such a difference ? Very recently several 

 men have looked into this subject, more 

 or less independently. The most com- 

 prehensive work has been done by 

 Lehmann at the Mysore Experiment 

 Station, India. Similar work has been 

 done by Lyon at Cornell, Montgomery 

 at Nebraska, Shoesmith in Ohio, and 

 Smith at Illinois, Allot' these investi- 

 gators find a surprising difference in 

 plots due to differences in soil. On what 

 was considered the most uniform soil at 

 the Nebraska Experiment Station the 



