80 
Improvement of the Plants of the Farm. 
improver of wheat, and an admirable writer on the subject ; 
and his pages, and those of many other writers in this 
' Journal,' may be consulted with advantage. In the history 
of plant-improvement there is no lack of materials, especially 
as regards wheat, which our predecessors evidently regarded as 
the mainstay of their farming — the plant which, among all 
others, most deserved their care. The literature devoted to this 
particular cereal and its improvement during the present century 
has been immense, and most of the earlier volumes of this 
' Journal ' afford proof of the interest which trials of different 
sorts of wheat have attracted. It may also be mentioned, in refer- 
ence to the history of attempted improvements, that samples are 
shown at the South Kensington Museum of different sorts of 
wheat collected by Sir Joseph Banks ; and these may some day 
be useful in enabling the investigator to compare the sorts of 
the last century with those of a future period. 
A prime object of improvers and selectors is to uphold the 
best types of each particular plant, that have been already 
attained, and, if possible, to advance them. It should be 
remembered that the agriculturist has no ally in the work that 
has been suggested. Nature lends him no aid, since she has 
no partialities. The principle of selection is a natural law, it 
is true, but Nature has no predilection for the improver's 
artificial selections ; she does not care for his chosen forms of 
mangolds or turnips. In a struggle for existence with the 
natural vegetation which too often presses upon our cultivated 
plants, most of them would perish. They were produced by 
improvers, ancient or modern, and the preservation of their 
excellence, and, if possible, their further progress, are dependent 
on the continued exercise of the art that advanced them to the 
point they have already reached. 
By the selection of profitable modifications, nature adapts 
both plants and animals to their surrounding circumstances ; 
and by following the example, plant-improvers have moulded 
cultivated plants in the same manner. There are early and late, 
and northern and southern varieties, all produced by breeding 
and selection, and — to mention a very important branch of the 
art of " improving " plants — varieties have been produced to 
suit rich and poor soils, as well as high and low farming. 
The maintenance of the breeds always engages a great deal of 
attention, and without great care in this respect, and in the intro- 
duction of new sorts, absolute degeneracy of the plants of the farm 
would occur. M r. Patrick ShirrefT, Mungoswells, Haddington, was 
one of the very numerous, known or unknown, improvers of the 
present century, making his first selection of wheat in 1819, and 
receiving a well-earned testimonial for bis services as a plant- 
