WEIGHING AND SCORING PLANTS FOR FURTHER BREEDING. 
/^NF, of tlie most important features of the work of breeding the Kellogg Strain of Strawberry Plants is the 
' selection of individuals from which are to be i>ropagated the thoroughbred plants grown upon this farm. 
By weighing the fruit as shown in illustration, we determine accurately the mother plants showing largest 
gains in quantity of fruit and those making the best records in every detail are the ones from which the selections 
are continued. Each numbered stake marks a mother plant. The foliage is so large it hides the space which 
separates these hills from others in the same row. Twelve plants were taken up from each of these staked hills 
and set in Breeding Bed No. 2 on April 5, 1905. 
NATURE is instinct with the purpose to 
preserve life and perpetuate it. The con- 
servation of forces is her first concern. 
She gives to some plants millions of seed more 
than are needed for their perpetuation lest, per- 
chance, they migjht pass out of e.xistence. In her 
determination that nothing that is shall be lost, 
nature is not mindful of quality. Nature gave 
to the world, for instance, the crabapple, sour, 
hard, coarse grained. She never improved upon 
it — man gave the world the Jonathan and 
Grimes' Golden, albeit he developed them from 
the tough and acid crab. Nature wishes to per- 
petuate the apple, and the crab grows as many 
seeds as any other apple; therefore it serves her 
purpose just as well as would the delicious 
Jonathan or Grimes' Golden. But man has his 
purposes. He, too, would perpetuate plant life; 
but he also is interested in making things that 
are attractive, pleasant, appetizing. He wants 
the .seeds, but he wants them covered with a 
delicious, palate -satisfying, eye - delighting, 
health-giving fruit. And this demand of man. 
universal, insistent, has brought into being the 
breeder, who by systems of selection, restriction 
and poUenation has transformed the unattractive 
crab into the delicious apple of today infinite in 
its variety, texture and flavor. 
But it is not given to man merely to develop 
the splendid fruits of today as typified by these 
popular apples, l^pon him is laid the burden 
of preserving what he has created. For nature, 
still jealous of her own, will yield not one iota 
to help man keep what he has won; rather she 
steadily seeks to destroy what he has brought 
forth. She wants more seeds with less effort; 
so she encourages the tendency of the apple to 
revert to the undesirable crab, l^his it is that 
gives reason for being to the modern plant 
breeder, and without his work, persistent, con- 
stant, never-wearying, the world would once 
more go back to the crabapple. 
As with the apple, so with every other fruit 
and flower and vegetable. All have been de- 
veloped from comparativel)' weak and valueless 
plants into things of sweetness, fragrance or 
oopvRiOHTio leoa, by r. m. kblloqq oo. 
