THE EDISON OF AGRICULTURE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 299, 14 December 1908, Page 4

THE EDISON OF AGRICULTURE

■All". loirlim li«s been described in Uie terms of tin? tailing, ami he deserves llm title, writes mi exchange. He '.a •i 11 Kujlishinun, who has worked for 211 years on thf question of making tw blades yrow where one grew before, and succeeded. Jiy tile .skilful eultivation of tin' earth and the sUiuulatiou of it with suitable immures he lias improved both wheat and eat--, but liis success Willi the grain itself has been by " crossibrceding" and development. In this way hi! has imjuuwd the existing grains and created some new varieties, and agriculture reaps the benclit of all. We want first of all to understand that food plants are the result of perpetual inbreeding. As he says himself—" Had it not bei'n for the way in which man, since he first tool; to promoting the growth of Hit.' grasses with the most luxuriant, heads—for that is what corn plants originally were—lias continually selected and re-selected from the best produce before proceeding to sow again, corn-plants would never have been the useful. |il»iils they are to-day. Further, it is evident, from this fact of inbreeding, that our com plants are not what, they might lie if wltnt may be called new blond could be introduced into their systems." And it is the infusion of new blood which has been his untiring task for tin' period mentioned. .Mr. Uarton explains that there is in each wheat seed a complete miniature, laboratory. It is composed of special cells, containing the reactive elements necessary to transform the fond contents of the seed, by the aid of the water absorbed from the soil into a perfect, soluble, saccharine, condition. This represents in its chemical composition, nutritive and assimilative value, the milk produced fur the lirst feeding of the newly-born animal. This conversion of the food > absolutely necessary before the developing germ can absorb it, and build no the primary .tissue necessary to oxtiud the rudimenlarv rootlets, which are th ■ lirst developments of the active germ. Hut it. is not at this stage thai ma'i extracts and uses its food contents for human consumption. It is in the latent preserved condition ill which the plant has stored it up, as {l grain of corn, lo await tlie time when favourable atmospheric and soil conditions warrant, lh" deposited dormant seed commencing the natural process of reproduction. In his ceaseless examination of grain in the growing Mr. tiarton discovered that each grain had become infected by a deteriorating growth, the result of developed heredity, and his tusk lay in removing this, ami stimulating the grain so il.prired to take on a better life. As it was. the wheal lacked wdiat bakers call strength and chemists gluten, and this meant, a loss ill Hour and a loss to the tpiality "f the Hour. The remedy wain surgical operations, and then cross fertilisation, and, after much oxpeiinfilling, he succeeded in doing both, and the grain as a result was greatly increased in si/.candeven more in its producing ipiaiity in the mill.