The double character of Major Hallett’s method--the breeding of _new prolific varieties_, and the method of culture by _planting the seeds wide apart_--seems, however, so far as I am entitled to judge, to have been overlooked until quite lately. The method was mostly judged upon its results; and when a farmer had experimented upon “Hallett’s Wheat,” and found out that it was late in ripening in his own locality, or gave a less perfect grain than some other variety, he usually did not care more about the method.[90] However, Major Hallett’s successes or non-successes in breeding such or such varieties are quite distinct from what is to be said about the method itself of selection, or the method of planting wheat seeds wide apart. Varieties which were bred, and which I saw grown still at Manor Farm, on the windy downs of Brighton may be, or may not be, suitable to this or that locality. Latest physiological researches give such an importance to evaporation in the bringing of cereals to maturity that where evaporation is not so rapid as it is on the Brighton Downs, other varieties must be resorted to and bred on purpose.[91] I should also suggest that quite different wheats than the English ought to be experimented upon for obtaining prolific varieties; namely, the quickly-growing Norwegian wheat, the Jersey “three months’ wheat,” or even Yakutsk barley, which matures with an astonishing rapidity. And now that horticulturists, so experienced in “breeding” and “crossing” as Vilmorin, Carter, Sherif, W. Saunders in Canada and many others are, have taken the matter in hand, we may feel sure that future progress will be made. But breeding is one thing; and the planting wide apart of seeds of an appropriate variety of wheat is quite another thing. This last method was lately experimented upon by M. Grandeau, Director of the Station Agronomique de l’Est, and by M. Florimond Dessprèz at the experimental station of Capelle; and in both cases the results were most remarkable. At this last station a method which is in use in France for the choice of seeds was applied. Already now some French farmers go over their wheat fields before the crop begins, choose the soundest plants which bear two or three equally strong stems, adorned with long ears, well stocked with grains, and take these ears. Then they crop off with scissors the top and the bottom of each ear and keep its middle part only, which contains the biggest seeds. With a dozen quarts of such selected grains they obtain next year the required quantity of seeds of a superior quality.[92]