Improvement of the Plants of the Farm. 
79 
We are here specially interested in the plants of the farm, 
though many other plants have been " improved," in the sense of 
having become, under man's skilled manipulation, more useful 
to him, more profitable, or more beautiful. He has never 
handled them in vain, and the field of operation is still full of 
subjects readv for his moulding. "Accustomed as we are," 
says INIr. Darwin, " to our excellent vegetables and luscious 
fruits, we can hardly persuade ourselves that the stringy roots of 
the wild carrot and parsnip, or the little shoots of the wild 
asparagus, or crabs, sloes, &c., should ever have been valued : 
yet, from what we know of the habits of the Australian and 
South African savages, we need feel no doubt on this head. 
The inhabitants of Switzerland during the Stone period largely 
collected wild crabs, sloes, bullaces, hips of roses, elderberries, 
beech-mast, and other wild berries and Iruit. Jemmv Button, a 
Fuegian on board the ' Beagle,' remarked to me that the poor 
and acid black currants of Terra del Fuego were too sweet for 
his taste." 
This quotation may remind the improver that wild fruits all 
over the world appear to have been the first forms of food, and 
that all the excellent and productive ciops of fields or gardens to 
which we are now accustomed in this and other countries are 
due to his predecessors. A list of writers who have explored 
the history of improvements in cultivated plants, from Virgil 
to De Candolle, will be found in Mr. Darwin's 'Animals and 
Plants under Domestication.' Attractive, however, as the subject 
of universal plant-improvement mav be, the writer of these pages 
must confine himself to the few plants known in our rotations, 
with perhaps some slight reference to others in illustration of 
the general subject. 
History and Methods of Plant Improvement : Cereals. — To 
Thomas Andrew Knight belongs the merit of first attempting the 
crossing of different varieties of wheat in this countrv : and he 
states that " in the years 1795 and 1796, when almost the whole 
corn of the island was blighted, the varieties thus obtained alone 
escaped in this neighbourhood when sown on different soils and 
situations." In 1851 Mr. Raynbird had the honour of being the 
first exhibitor of a cross-bred variety of wheat, which was obtained 
by fertilising Piper's Thickset with pollen from one of Mr. Patrick 
Shirreff's selections, the Houptoun. The first volume of this 
'Journal' contained an account of Morton's Red-straw White- 
wheat, and numerous articles relating to the improvement of 
wheat have since appeared, from the " Report on Prize Wheat," 
in 1842, to a similar report on the " Competition for Seed- 
Wheat," by Mr. Carruthers, in 1881. 
Colonel Le Couteur must be mentioned as a well-known 
