AGRICULTURAL SEEDS. — 
man accustomed to make the most minute obser- 
vations would scarcely observe such a variety, 
unless otherwise distinguished by some peculiar 
badge; nor would any but a person versed in 
plants know that it was of superior value if 
placed before him. How many varieties answer- 
ing this description may have existed and escaped 
observation, which, had they been observed and 
carefully treated, would have proved an invalu- 
able acquisition to the community! The num- 
ber of fertile joints in the spike of the wheat 
generally cultivated, varies from eighteen to 
twenty-two; and the inhabitants of Great Britain 
and Ireland amount to nearly the same number 
of millions; therefore, as the wheat produced in 
those islands has been of late years sufficient, or 
nearly sufficient, to supply the inhabitants thereof 
with bread, it is evident that a variety with two 
additional fertile joints, and equal in other re- 
|| spects to the varieties at present in cultivation, 
would, when it became an object of general cul- 
ture, afford a supply of bread to at least two 
millions of souls, without even another acre being 
brought into cultivation, or one additional drop 
of sweat from the brow of the husbandman.” 
89 
sides of a field, during a few minutes of each of 
several days when their ripening is in progress— 
they could scarcely fail, on almost every farm, to 
present some specimens which would richly re- 
ward the observer’s care. Yet a judicious man, 
in all his observations and efforts for the improve- 
ment of seed-corn, will bestow an hundredfold 
more pains in improving a confessedly good 
variety already in possession, than in nursing a 
new variety of doubtful character, or making a 
strenuous effort to offer an original contribution 
to the good varieties of the shops. Some far- 
mers—and these not always well qualified for 
the task—seem to have almost a passion to he- 
come the discoverers of new varieties of grain, 
and to give their names in connexion with them 
to the world; and many have expended large 
portions of their time in watching, and nursing, 
and forcing pet plants of their detection, with no 
other result than blank disappointment, or at 
the best the contribution of varieties which had 
little or nothing to recommend them but their 
novelty. The system of accidental discovery, in 
fact, has, with a very few exceptions, been a 
plague to the discoverers, and a nuisance to the 
One grand means of improving seed-corn is, on ; world ; and hence the necessity of new varieties 
the first occasion of sowing, to obtain the finest | being sought only by minute, practised, and | 
| and most productive quality suitable to the par- 
ticular soil and climate, to clean it, as thoroughly 
| as possible, from all broken grain and seeds of | 
weeds, and to give it the best conditions of culti- 
-vation which good draining, good tillage, and 
good exposure can command; and then, for a 
series of years, at the time of the ripening of the 
crop, to select as large a number, as time and 
circumstances will permit, of the strongest and 
healthiest of the plants for the seed-corn of the 
next year’s sowing. Two plants growing beside 
each other, under the same conditions of culture, 
often differ widely in both their total and their 
nutritious contents ; and the practice of selecting 
some of the strongest and plumpest for inter- 
mixture with the portion of crop set apart for 
seed-corn, would have the additional advantage 
of creating the habits of minute and discriminat- 
ing observation which Mr. Bishop desiderates, 
and might probably lead to the detection of some 
entirely new and valuable varieties. Plants which 
grow together in enormous numbers like the 
cereal grains and the other common vegetable 
productions of a farm, are constantly exhibiting 
individual instances of great change in their 
habits of growth, of development, and of fructifi- 
cation, from the operation of chemical agency in 
the soil, of obscure expansions or contortions in 
the individual organism, of electric or gaseous 
influence in the atmosphere, of the hybridizing 
power of foreign varieties which happen to be pre- 
sent, and of several other causes to which super- 
ficial thinkers are not likely to advert ; and were 
the plants raised from choice and selected seed, 
observed from year to year with a tolerably know- 
ing eye—were they even glanced at, along the 
scientific observation, or by the artificial but 
still more certain process of hybridizing. 
Hybrid plants have a character among vege- 
tables exactly corresponding to that of mules 
among animals; and they may, like mules, be 
produced either with or without the interference 
of man. See article Hysrips. The pollen or 
fecundating dust of a plant of one variety is 
sprinkled upon the stigma or reproductive or- 
ganism of a plant of another variety ; and the 
ripened seeds of the latter produce plants which | 
combine the properties of both varieties, probably 
wanting the objectionable properties of each, and | 
possessing the desirable properties of both. Some 
hybrids, of course, may be sheer deteriorations ; 
some may be merely equal in worth to either of 
the parent varieties ; and only some are decided | 
improvements, and these in various degrees. As 
hybridizing proceeds without as well as with 
human interference, it may often be a source of 
the partial deterioration of a portion of the 
seed-corn of crops; and it ought to be a decided | 
reason for every farmer sowing a field with only 
one variety of seed, and using care to keep every 
prime variety perfectly unmixed. “ Hybrid va- 
rieties of agricultural plants, when suffered to 
intermingle with the original kind, disseminate | 
their influence around them like cross-bred ani- 
mals, unrestrained in their intercourse with the 
general herd, till the character of the stock be- 
comes changed, and consequently deteriorated 
or improved.” Care should be exercised also not 
to use any hybrid which has directly sprung 
from very widely different varieties; for such 
hybrids, like those between two species of a 
genus, may continue fertile during only three or 
