The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1905-03-18
Seed Selection.

!, Seed Selection.
TO draw the essence from big
proposition and condense into a sentence
the benefits of the good seed agitation
in the northwest, one may say, with
satisfaction and with confidence as to
future effect, that it has done a good
thing-it has made the farmer think
hard upon the subject. Wherever the
trains have gone and the university men
have talked, leaven Of unrest has
been left in the community. The idea
Of improvement and betterment Of crops
naturally followed the scientific demon
stration of the greater possibilities in
farm work, and, with the technical
points dwelt upon pedagogically, there
has also been left with the farmers in
the form of oral argument enough Of the
element of plain common sense to tone
down the whole to the level Of the prac-
tical. No better talks to farmers ever
were heard, nor were any ever listened
to- with greater interest than those de-
livered during the week in southern
Minnesota.
There was at first a trace of that
Fsemi- antagonistic state Of mind not I'M
common in the farmer. Encountered
generally, in the earlier days of the
farmers Institutes, it. was again in
evidence i'll some degree. The feeling
of :offshness, or what might perhaps
be called half resentful curiosity,
marked the faces of many who attended.
The farmer rather felt that railroad
and grain men and the college professors
had come down to tell him his business.
He lost this feeling and came into
closest touch with the spirit of the
movement as the meeting progressed.
}Some localities there. are in which the
farmers have little to learn, where seed
selection and propagation and treatment
OF. seed before planting are regular prac-
tices, but for the greater part this can
not be said Scientific farming is still
a thing considered of little Importance
by many. Illustration of this was
found in the recent work. Talking to
farmers about seed selection and breed
ing, Of types in wheat and oats, or pedi-
grees in corn, the college men found
themselves preaching doctrines new to
many. Men familiar, as were their
fathers, with the rules and methods ap-
pertaining to selection in livestock
breeding, and putting them into prac-
tice with results that may be counted
upon in advance, were found neverthe-
less to be ignorant of the principles Of
breeding as applicable to cereals, and in
clined at first to look askance at propo-
sitions put to them along this line.
Nature IS Elasticity takes innumer-
able forms. AS man over a period Of
time can by careful selection produce a
high type Of animal in the horse or the
cow, as he may work for typal purity
and the increase Of intensifcation of
particularly desirable qualities as
speed, or milk or fesh-producing abil-
ity, just so he can work in grain with
results no less certain. Fundamentally
this doctrine is as old as time, there is
even biblical allusion to it, yet the good
seed trains covered thousands of miles,
and over 10000 heard the lectures in
all, and of these great many heard the
doctrine of rigid seed selection, as COM
pn7ed with the practices in the work Of
livestock breeding as something new
It was not that the farmer did not
know it all the time. Simply he had
not thought much about it.
1T developed, in the course of four
day run, that a great many farmers
when they gather in their crops, market
them as best. suits their convenience, re-
tanning always enough for seed. Not
in dozen instances was it learned that
special care had been, taken to get the
best and strongest grain on the farm
for seed. Rather it is the practice to
lump it all and sell it off, and then take
the leftover portion to SOW, much as
tho a farmer desiring a bull for his
stock farm, should go to market where
there were forty in pen, and, to save
himself little work, and the bother of
looking them over, should let them all
run out and take the last one left. :.
The; individuality of a seed, the diff
ference between Two grain kernels from
the same field or the same head, the rea-
sons why. one, in the first. fifteen days
Of growth will get good start, while
another will not come along, and the i'm
portance Of this early start in shaping
the future development, were points
illustrated in a homely way, by a1lusion
to the well known rules in the business
of animal breeding, and the farmers
grasped the proposition readily, and be-
ieved in the statements made as to. re-
suits possible to attain. The work of
the experimental station proved the
statements. y - s.. !
From it all there will be an improve.
ment in seed selection that cannot fail
so benefit the country very materially,