350 



On increasing our Supplies of Animal Food. 



of variety or breed — may be conferred upon and rendered perma- 

 nent in plants just as it has been conferred upon animals. And 

 if there were room, I could name many reasons why the society 

 should bestow equal patronage on the breeding of plants with 

 that of animals : the latter has hitherto engrossed its attention; 

 but the former even more than the latter determines the quantity 

 of meat which land shall produce. It determines the quantity of 

 real food out of which meat is produced, and that is of greater 

 importance than the mere arrangement of the particles on the 

 bodies of animals. A short-horn ox, or a Hereford or Devon, 

 has attained its perfect form in consequence of a long and patient 

 attention by the breeder to the laws of good breeding — laws 

 which it is not mere confidence in the analogies of vegetable and 

 animal existence to say have equal jurisdiction in the vegetable 

 world. For they have in some instances been acted on by growers 

 of plants, and they have been productive of as valuable results 

 here as have been obtained under them by breeders of animals. 

 Mr. Maund, of Bromsgrove, has more than once, by crossing 

 varieties of wheat, obtained a hybrid of greater vigour and more 

 useful growth than either of its parents had exhibited : the cross 

 of the common and Swedish turnips has resulted in Dale's va- 

 luable hybrid. Gardeners well know the use of hybridising- as a 

 source of variety in fruit and flower, and this is not the only 

 art of value which agriculture might, under the influence of its 

 guardian societies, if they would only exert it, be induced to 

 borrow from the horticulturist. Under the present accidental 

 sort of benefit which the facts of this art have hitherto conferred 

 upon the farmer, we can enumerate many useful sorts of well- 

 known crops as their result. Natural hybrids accidentally formed, 

 have been selected by careful observers — when artificial ones of 

 the kind required might have been created. But even this less 

 valuable use of hybridising has been of great service : it has given 

 rise to our best varieties of turnip, rye-grass, tare, and even of 

 wheat, oats, barley, &c. Messrs. Laing, Lawson^ Matson, and 

 Skirving, and others, have sent out well-marked varieties of 

 Swedish turnips selected from natural hybrids, and propagated 

 with care and intelligence. Messrs. Rodwell and Dickenson 

 have in like manner selected natural hybrids of Italian rye-grass. 

 To Mr. SherrifT, late of Mungoswells, in East Lothian, we owe 

 remarkably vigorous descriptions of the vetch and the oat ; and 

 all these plants deserve a more particular notice of their qualities 

 as developers of fertility than either our room or our acquaint- 

 ance with them permits. My experience among Swedish turnips 

 is, that Laing's is the neatest grower of any, and one which on 

 very rich land I should choose ; — that Matson's, with its re- 

 markably small head, and as being the least likely to run to seed, 



