BREEDING FROM "TAME" VERSUS "WILD" SPECIES. 
From my earliest interest in plant breeding I have been impressed with what 
seemed to be _ the axiom of all hybridist, t. e. the theory of breeding back to the 
species "wild," as one of the greatest errors and obstacles to advancement in the 
line of improvement and progress, and during the recent International Conference 
of Plant Breeders held m New York this idea seemed to pervade the whole situation 
to siich an extent that the error called forth my strong protest early in our first 
meeting at that time. 
• /^["s .""''''P'ted scope of this question makes it impossible for me to deal with 
it fully m this paper, and my present object is to voice a warning to plant breed- 
ers in order that valuable time may not be lost by them in permitting limitations 
to be placed upon their activity, and the wheels of progress thereby delayed. 
Before I abandoned my effort in improving the Canna, I secured ample proof 
of the correctness of the view to which I am giving expression, and Dr Van 
i^lect .s report at the Conference referred to, showed that onlv one type of merit 
rewarded the many years of his labor on the gladiolus— in breeding from the "wild" 
species. 
While conducting my experiments on these and all lines I kept in mind the 
influence of cross-breeding on all hybrid types, both plant and animal, and found 
the lessons presented by the hum:in family to be the most valuable and compre- 
hensive—although here the crosses were by no means of a scientific character yet 
the enormous multiplication of such examples, and I may say of errors aflforded 
a vast field for profitable investigation. 
Few animal breeders have made the mistake of plant breeders, and those who 
did go back to the earliest obtainable types in hope of material improvement on 
hnes of utility and value, secured the usual large crop of weeds as the result The 
niost noted and successful animal breeders are those who have developed sires by 
the most careful selection of parentage, and by the most distant removal from the 
'wild species, and I am convinced that were these removals increased by many 
thousands, the satisfactory results would be increased in even greater ratio than have 
been evinced in those preceding. 
The so-called Mendellan theory is largely responsible for the limitations re- 
ferred to m the activity of plant breeders, giving them (be idea that definite and 
duplicate types can be created by certain crosses, and. while this is apparentlv so in 
the ofTspriiig of limited pedigree, it is completely lost in the more advanced and 
valuable types containing a larger number of cresses, and where plant breeders do 
make crosses by the tens of thousands, using the most advanced specific types of 
domestic production as sires as would be done bv animal breeders— the Mendellan 
theory is soon forgotten, for in plant and animal breeding from "wild" species this 
theory is only the one and one make two, and two and two make four stage, of what 
nuist be built up from thousands of units, before a fraction of the possibilities of 
the improvement we aim to achieve can be realized. It. however, is of value as an 
illustration of the composition of the simple hybrid form with its latent and patent 
elements, and one of the .great obiects of plant breeders must be to keep many of 
these elements as latent as possible. 
To refer again to my own specialty, the gladiolus, in the modern creations of 
which we have the most advanced examples in hybridity in plants, assuming that 
my contention is tenable as to this fiower having been subjected to the greatest 
number of crosses, we are given an object lesson on the lines of my objections to 
the practice of going back at all at this stage of our progress to the "wild" species 
for revitalization, my object being to keep as far away from them as possible. 
European originators have always acted on the former theory with the result 
that their productions are bred to type, and the specific parentage of their hybrids 
is apparent to a marked degree carrying with them not only the original peculiarities 
of weak stems and plants, but also the lack of adaptability to changed conditions of 
soil and climate which we must expect to find in all "wild" species, and which we 
now know to be the product of environment with its coercing limitations as to 
habitat. 
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