By experiment and observation form a very clear conception of precisely the type of plant and fruits which is best suited to your needs. This may be done by the study of available descriptions of sorts, by conference with those who have had experience in your own or similar climatic and soil conditions and in raising fruit for the same purposes and, best of all, by trials of samples of different sorts and stocks on your own grounds. Having formed such a conception, write out the clearest possible description of exactly what you want and the ideal plant you are aiming at, stating as fully and minutely as possible every desirable quality and also those to be avoided. I consider not only the formation of an exact ideal, but the writing out of a most minute and exact description of precisely what in every particular the ideal plant should be and the rigid adherence to that exact ideal in selection, as the most important elements of successful seed breeding. Without it one is certain to vary from year to year in the type selected and in just so far as he does this, even if it be toward what might be called improvements or in regard to an unimportant quality, he undermines all his work and makes it impossible to establish a strain which can be relied upon to produce an exact type. With this description in hand, search out one or more plants which seem the nearest to the ideal. In doing this it should be kept in mind that the character of the seed is determined by the plant rather than by the individual fruit. Therefore, a plant whose fruit is most uniformly of the desired type should be chosen over one having a small proportion of its fruits of very perfect type, the others being different and variable. Save seed from one or more fruits from each of the selected plants, keeping that from each fruit, or at least each plant, separate. Give it a number and make a record of how nearly, in each particular, the plant and fruit of each number come to the desired ideal. I regard the saving of each lot separately and recording its characters as very important, even when all have been selected to and come equally close to precisely the same ideal. Quite often the seed of one plant will produce plants precisely like it, while that of another, equal or superior, will produce plants of which no two are alike and none like that which produced the seed, so that often the mixing of seed from different plants of the same general type, and seemingly of equal quality, prevents the establishment of a uniform type.