556 Seed-Breeding . [August, 
has retained, apparently, its variety characteristic of a red 
colour. In the arrangement of the kernels we have a 
feature wherein there has been little effort to fix the number, 
as the benefit of a fixity of type here has not been generally 
recognised. Hence we find in this respeCt a great varia- 
bility, and there are but few varieties wherein a good per- 
centage of other numbered rows than the normal number 
do not appear. Scarcely a field of eight-rowed corn but 
what will show ten- or twelve-rowed ears to the searcher 
after them. Scarcely a twelve-rowed corn wherein eight-, 
or fourteen-, or sixteen-rowed specimens do not exist. 
The means in the power of the seed-grower to improve 
his seed is now indicated, and their efficacy has been shown. 
It is not heredity ; it is not that the seed will produce a 
plant and a seed like its parent plant ; it is no new and 
novel proposition which has been untried, but, as shown by 
all the fads of experience and reasoning, it is in the accu- 
mulation of desired qualities so as to determine the character 
inherited ; for, let us repeat, even if charged with tautology, 
that heredity is general in the poor and the good seed alike, 
in the desirable as well as the undesirable qualities, and 
that it is but the character of the qualities which are trans- 
mitted which concern us most intimately in our efforts to 
improve. To accumulate good qualities to be transmitted 
in the stead of less desirable qualities, — to gain even an 
advance this year, and again another the next, and so on 
continuously, is the secret of breeding. It is not the plant 
like the parent plant that is the most profitable, but the 
better plant than the parent, and ajl that is to be done is to 
cause the individual plant to vary for the better, and then 
to hold on to the gain by each year, each generation to fix 
this good quality and to add on to it, so that it shall become 
a characteristic of the variety or the breed. The art of 
selection, the practice of selection, the continuous adding 
and subtracting of qualities from our plant is the secret, as 
well as the plain common-sense of breeding. So long as 
law prevails and forces aCt, we have in our plant, in our seed 
as representative of the plant, the reproduction of those 
qualities which have been impressed upon it from the past, 
and by changing these qualities in the present we can pass 
them along through the intervention of the seed, to future 
generations, and thus, through the continuous additions and 
strengthenings, can form the plant which shall devote itself 
to the carrying out of our desires, and which shall in a 
measure eventually overcome even what at first thought we 
would call the design of Nature. 
