30 : [ASSEMBLY 
the fleshy swollen portion. Stage three, the premorse; the lower part 
of the fleshy portion ending abruptly as if bitten off, ete. — 
This arrangement would admit, once granting the fixity of varieties, 
the at once assigning of a plant grown for its roots to a division con- 
taining so few varieties as to admit of finding quickly a close descri»- 
tion of the variety to be identified by careful comparison of the 
description with the root in hand. At first sight this system, however, 
must appear awkward, on account of our non-familiarity, and present 
education in another direction ; it certainly does not detract from its 
merits that universal knowledge will at once admit of calling a beet a 
beet, or a carrot a carrot, without referring to our table, which will, in 
practice, but serve to identify a variety within a species. 
A careful examination into the motives which have been exercised 
upon other kinds of plants will furnish material suitable for carrying 
the system proposed into practice with all the agricultural plants, and 
will end, we may hope, in giving us an agricultural botany of precision, 
and which will require to be supplemented only by a genetic arrange- 
ment which shall give the position of the species in the natural system. 
If seed of the various sorts of the cabbage family be planted along- 
side, a resemblance will be seen between all the seedlings at a certain 
date; it is only as growth proceeds that the development begins to 
differentiate differences. It seems probable, through a study of the 
laws of breeding, that the period of divergence marks the period at 
which original selection commenced in order to obtain our present 
forms. If this observation be substantiated, then by careful study of 
seedling development we shall be able to determine points of departure — 
at which human guidance shall be enabled to direct in line with the 
tendencies of the plant. This study of plant-growth after the method 
used in zodlogy, the study of embryology so to speak, not the term 
“embryology” as applied to nature’s plant, but that of man’s plant, 
the period between the seed and the differentiation from the natural 
type, offers much promise of good result, and it seems quite probable 
that as we attempt to influence the development of the plant before 
or at the time of the differentiation into the acquired properties of 
the mature plant we can initiate a new series of selections in certain 
varieties whose root, bulb, stem and foliage finds use. | 
Thus, to illustrate, if a row of seedling beet plants be carefully 
observed, it will be noticed that at the first all the young plants have 
like roots; after a time certain roots will commence to vary in sub- 
stance from their neighbors, and in a short time this variation will 
acquire the typical form of the variety in advance of the other plants. 
Through the marking of those plants which first change their form 
from the natural to the artificial plant, and reserving for seed purposes, 
and through doing this for several generations, we may hope to obtain 
an earliness in a new variety thus formed, which would only be acci- 
dentally gained through the selecting of the largest or best root at 
period of harvest. Our observations upon our seedlings will also show 
other points of divergence than earliness, as of the habit of early 
growing the summit of the root above the ground, and this habit may 
well form the beginning of another process of selection. In like. 
manner to secure earliness in the cabbage we would select from rows 
of an early maturity that plant which first begins to leave the type 
common to the various races for the type impressed by art, and so on 
for other vegetables. | 
