Improvement of the Plants of the Farm. 
91 
hoods. " We want a wheat," says a northern farmer, " which 
will ripen three weeks earlier than any of our varieties." Diseases 
have been prevalent in the late unhealthy seasons, and we are 
asked for varieties which may defy them. It is not a matter of 
hypothesis, but a fact of observation, that some wheats are less 
liable to rust than others, and that this arises from their origin 
or their constitution, some varieties enjoying in this respect an 
immunity more or less complete. Wheat, again, may become 
laid from several causes, physical or chemical, and these may 
operate alone or in concert. Storms and high manuring are 
beyond the influence of the wheat-breeder, but it is his business 
I to consider temperament. Some varieties of wheat have a heavy 
ear, as well as straw which is at once weak and loaded with 
leaf, so that the crop must needs fall ; and coarse-strawed 
wheat often falls flat and all together. 
Whatever the American cultivator ftiay have done to secure 
the divergence of maize, and to adapt it to different soils and 
localities, the English improver may do in the case of wheat. 
It would be an error to suppose that nature helped the 
I American, for, if progress be a law of nature, retrogression and 
degeneration are quite as much so. Nature shows no solicitude 
as regards cultivated plants, and her selections, securing the 
survival of the fittest, would not be favourable to a high-bred, 
high-fed cereal. The plant-improver, on the contrary, is not 
I ' impartial, he derives the principle of selection from nature ; 
but in carrying it into practice he works systematically and 
thoroughly with one object — the improvement of the plant from 
his point of view. We have seen what Mr. Shirreff effected by 
means of his accidental discoveries, and the question naturally 
arises whether artificial crossing and the " matching " of suit- 
able varieties will not effect greater improvements than the 
accidental operations of nature. At present the cross-fertilisa- 
tion of cereals, and the subsequent selection of the varieties, has 
been but slightly attended to, and we must wait for results. 
Mr. Laxton is one of the ablest hybridisers and improvers of 
;. horticultural plants, and cannot spare time for other breeding ; 
il I but he writes that he did once cross wheat, working upon the 
A Early Japan variety, and the most productive sorts of high 
1 1| quality. The results of such calculated labours should exceed 
,| , those of all haphazard crossing, whether natural or artificial. 
i The experimenter should commence his operations with a clear 
ji . kno\yledge of the task he has set himself, and of what particular 
^ I modification he wishes to accomplish, whether he wants a 
^ I hardier variety of the plant he is engaged upon, an earlier or 
' a later sort, &c. Dr. Masters, as Editor of the 'Gardeners' 
^ \ Chronicle,' has had a long and intimate acquaintance with the 
