I879-J 
Seed-Breeding . 
547 
In experiments with single hills under different treatment, 
in another plot, the ears varied from three to ten in number, 
the weight of corn from 1 lb. to 3 J lbs. in the ear, the 
weight of stover from ij to 6 J lbs., and the total weight of 
hills as harvested from 3 lbs. to 9 ^ lbs. harvested. 
In those plants which have been subjected to culture for 
the longest time we find variation, as a rale, more marked 
than in those in a state of nature. It is a curious and 
valuable reflection that those plants whose origin in their 
present form antedates the history of civilisation are at the 
furthest remove from the wild condition, and have become 
modified to such an extent as to be unable to hold their 
present forms without the assistance of man. We also find 
that wherever the part of the plant modified into use admits 
of a variety of forms as connected with its uses, there such 
exist. There is, as a rule, but slight variations between the 
growths of our most ancient cereals, as attention has been 
paid more to the grain produced than to the plant which 
produced it : in the cabbage family, however, where the 
plant rather than the seed is used, we find variation into 
cauliflowers, broccoli, borecoles, Brussels sprouts, savoys, 
cabbage, collards, or coleworts, &c., and these varieties all 
reproduce themselves by seed. 
The art of breeding seeds is therefore to produce and 
seleCt such variations as are found desirable, and then to 
establish these variations so that they shall be transmissible 
either in their present or in an improved condition, by seed. 
The means of breeding is through the aCt of selection car- 
ried on for successive generations under well-considered 
conditions of environment, by which the heredity of the 
seed in the desired direction shall be strengthened. This 
heredity of the seed brings us more closely to our subject. 
There are many degrees of heredity, so far as the breeder 
is concerned. There are some plants in which the tendency 
of the seedling to grow into a plant but slightly varying 
from the parent is very strong, and such are usually wild 
plants which include in their ancestry countless generations 
of somewhat similar environment, and a uniform natural 
selection in aCtion which has selected and continuously pro- 
pagated the type of plant best fitted to exist amidst the 
dangers and difficulties of the surroundings. With such a 
plant the first effort of the breeder is to produce a variation, 
to overcome the tenacity which leads the seed to propagate 
in the manner of its ancestry. This tenacity is a heredity 
neither strong r nor weaker than that which is to be found 
