Select one hundred seeds from a good, and one hundred from a poor, plant of the same variety. Sow them in two plats far enough apart to avoid cross-pollination, yet try to have soil conditions about the same. Give each the same care and compare the yield. Try this with corn, cotton, and wheat. Select seeds from the best plant in your good plat and from the poorest in your poor plat and repeat the experiment. This will require but a few feet of ground, and the good plat will pay for itself in yield, while the poor plat will more than pay in the lesson that it will teach you. Write to the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., and to your state experiment station for bulletins concerning seed-selection and methods of plant-improvement. SECTION XIX. SELECTING SEED CORN If a farmer would raise good crops he must, as already stated, select good seed. Many of the farmer's disappointments in the quantity and quality of his crops--disappointments often thought to come from other causes--are the result of planting poor seed. Seeds not fully ripened, if they grow at all, produce imperfect plants. Good seed, therefore, is the first thing necessary for a good crop. The seed of perfect plants only should be saved. By wise and persistent selection, made in the field before the crop is fully matured, corn can be improved in size and made to mature earlier. Gather ears only from the most productive plants and save only the largest and best kernels. [Illustration: FIG. 53. THE KIND OF EAR TO SELECT] You have no doubt seen the common American blackbirds that usually migrate and feed in such large numbers. They all look alike in every way. Now, has it ever occurred to you to ask why all blackbirds are black? The blackbirds are black simply because their parents are black. Now in the same way that the young blackbirds resemble their parents, corn will resemble its parent stock. How many ears of corn do you find on a stalk? One, two, sometimes three or four. You find two ears of corn on a stalk because it is the nature of that particular stalk to produce two ears. In the same way the nature of some stalks is to produce but one ear, while it is the nature of others sometimes to produce two or more. This resemblance of offspring to parent is known to scientists as heredity, or as "like producing like." Some Southern corn-breeders take advantage of this law to improve their corn crop. If a stalk can be made to produce two ears of corn just as large as the single ear that most stalks bear, we shall get twice as much corn from a field in which the "two-eared" variety is planted. In the North and West the best varieties of corn have been selected to make but one ear to the stalk. It is generally believed that this is the best practice for the shorter growing seasons of the colder states. [Illustration: FIG. 54. SELECT SEED FROM A STALK LIKE THAT ON LEFT]