The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-01-20
FARM AND
GARDEN
INTERESTS
Novelties i'm wheat and Corn.

Novelties i'm Wheat and Corn.
Youths Companion.
Not very long ago Sir William Crookes.
president of the British Association, as
serted gloomily that by 1881 the world
would not produce enough wheat to go
round His argument was that there is
just so much wheat land upon the globe.
and that the wheat-eating races are in
creasing beyond the limit of future sup
ply.
But Sir William forgot the inventiveness
of the Yankee: and the American editor
who responded that If a steady price Of
dollar a bushel was guaranteed America
would take the contract to supply what
was needed was not far wrong. The wheat
lands may be limited but the future posi-
bllites of wheat itself are also to be reck
oned with.
Man has been raising wheat for uncount-
ed ages, and corn for centuries; yet the
grains themselves have changed very little
under cultivation since our first record of
them- But to-day chemistry and biology
nave taken turn toward agriculture, and
wheat In Minnesota and corn in Illinois
have been the subjects of marvellous and
successful experiment.
Ten years ago, for instance, the Mime
sofa State Experiment Station took UP the
idea OF producing new wheats. 1t is, in the
| beginning, a French idea Mons Henri Vii
mo=in having done some fine experiment.
ing.
The American workers have already pro-
uuced some startling results. They began
by artincially cross-breeding various
wheats. To do this, we are told, the ex-
perimenters went into the blossomng
wheat at O'Clock i'm the morning trans
Ierred the pollen of one sort to the flow
ers or another, tied the heads so treated
IN tlny bags of tissue, TO keep out insects
or birds. and marked them with record
tags. When these heads of wheat matured
the seed grains were harvested, registered
and planted by themselves.
some or these infinitesimal crops turned
out poorly, some encOuragingly Out of the
hundreds of wheats thus bred some eight
or ten showed marked advance. These
were sowed and reaped until there was
enough seed to give out to farmers to use
In open field trials"
IL takes about ten years of patient work to
DInS each new variety to this farm test"
BUT the results justify the labor In most
cases these new wheats yielded at least two
bushels more to the acre than the standard
wheat, and were vigorous and healthy. In
one case, where the average yield was fifteen
pushels, the new Minnesota No. 1897 yield
! ed forty-two bushels-a result which ought
TO cheer Sir William Crookes's heart
Meanwhile. in Illinois. the Agricultural
college, at Urbana has been working away
| on corn, by selection and careful breeding.
| The Illinois eXperimenters, as one report
puts II, have been ''outwitting and reform
ing nature. They have aimed, not only at
| increasing the yield. but at controlling the
dement's of the kernel itself They have
/ succeeded in growing with less or more
OIL, or less or more protein at will.
! Corn oil is so important an element that
one manufacturer has offered cents a
| bushel more for every extra l per cent. OF
! oil In the corn. Over per cent. has already
been added. and a further advance is looked
Tor; while per cent. of protein has been
added to another variety.
A corn register" is now established in
Illinois, where the pedigree of the different
new varieties are registered precisely as
| pedlgreed animals are recorded. An increase
of ten bushels an acre is prophesied-which
| would mean $5OOc0,O00 more for Illinois or
| her yearly corn crop, just Minnesota and
| the Dakotas, with the new wheat can hope
for $50 100000 more annually
1t all sounds like fairy tale. But IL has
| been done step by step, with almost incred-
| ible painstaking; and il is no more marvel
Gus. after all. than the development of ar
| American Beauty" from the original wild
rose. Who knows what wonderful wheats
| the twenty-frst century may see? If the
farmers boy of to-day finds the farm out
! look stupid, the dulness must be more in
himself than in the possibilities of agri.
Nculture