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number of seeds in each pod was increased from seven or eight to eight or 
nine, and not unfrequently to ten. The newly made grey kinds I found 
were easily made white again by impregnating their blossoms with the farina 
of another white kind. In this experiment the seeds, which grew towards 
the point of the pod, and were by position first exposed to the action of the 
male, would sometimes produce seeds like it in colour, whilst those at the 
other end would follow them. 
“ In other instances the whole produce of the pod would take the colour 
of one or other of the parents; and I had once an instance in which two 
peas at one end of a pod produced white seeds like the male, two at the 
other end grey ones like the female, and the central seeds took the inter¬ 
mediate shade, a clay colour. Something very similar appears to take place 
in animals, which produce many young ones at a birth, when the male and 
female are of opposite colours. From some very imperfect experiments I 
have made, I am led to suspect that considerable advantage would be found 
to arise from the use of new or regenerated varieties of wheat; and these are 
easily obtained, as this plant readily sports in varieties, whenever different 
kinds are sown together/ 9 
To collect good seeds, according to the observations of Mr. Cooper of 
Philadelphia, consists not in procuring new seeds from distant places, as is 
generally supposed, but in selecting the best seeds and roots of his own; 
which though he has continually sown or planted them in the same soil, 
every article of his produce is greatly superior to those of any other person, 
who supplies the market; and they seem still in a state of improvement. 
He believed that no kind of relationship would degenerate the breeds of 
vegetables, and therefore adopted the plan of Mr. Bakewell in England in 
respect to quadrupeds, who continued to improve his flocks and herds by 
the marriages of those in which the properties he wished to produce were 
most conspicuous, without regard to consanguinity. 
Mr. Cooper was led to his present practice, which he began more than 
forty years ago, by observing that vegetables of all kinds were very subject 
to change with respect to their time of coming to maturity, and other 
properties, but that the best seeds never failed to produce the best plants. 
Among a great number of experiments he particularly mentions the 
following. 
“ About the year 1^46 his father procured seeds of the long watery 
squash , and though they have been used upon the farm ever since that 
