A CIANT OAT.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 334, 22 October 1908, Page 5

A CIANT OAT.

There is growing on Garton's seed grounds at Warrington in Lancashire a single oat plant which surpasses by several hundred points any cereal ever produced ill the world (says the "Daily Mail"). The single head contains a few short of 1000 grains, ten times as many as you will find in the best crops. The plant is a moro or less accidental result of tho original system of what may bo called accelerated evolution, which has been practised on these grounds f6r the last twenty-seven years. '■ This particular prodigy has been obtained by crossing highly-developed oats with the wild oat, which has an incalculable capacity for bearing seeds. These are small and useless;' but tho; strange .fact has been discovered that the wild oat may. in crossing even enlarge the grain of the cross, as well as increase its number. This particular oat is but an extreme instance of the newproductions in r cereals of all sorts. It is an indisputable fact, though practical farmers will have difficulty in believing it, that on these grounds oat crops of 160 bushels to the acre—that is, twice . the weight of a high average of present crops —liavo Jbeen reaped without'any artificial manure or any' intensive cultivation.' It may, be years-before the most prolific of these grains come into commerce, but a juncture has been reached when a great part of ithe world ' has suddenly come to see that-England is the greatest plant-breeding, country in the world, even greater in'plantbreeding than animal breeding; -Especially in Denmark and tho United States have these scientific results at Warrington caused a sensation, and this pitch of certainty has been reached, that- each country can get from-England just what it requires—a large ear, or ; short straw, or .loose husk, or tight husk, or early, maturity. * Indeed, Canada is now : being ; supplied. with her chief- requisite a grain no less than . seventeen days earlier than those at . present grown. ;