James Cheesman

“ The farmer is a near neighbor of hard facts, and living in days when everything is questioned, and nothing is taken for granted—when every institution in the land has to make good its claim to existence by the results produced—he is not likely to be deceived, or to grab any longer at the shadow for the substance. ”

“ Beyond all question, in thickly-sown wheat, very many of what appear as stems in the spring die away before harvest, and have thus grown not only uselessly, but in the struggle for existence have starved and stunted those which ultimately came to ears.
In ordinary English crops the number of ears produced per acre being taken as about 1,000,000, and the crop as 34 bushels, we have, at 700,000 grains per bushel, 23,800,000 grains per acre, or an average per ear of only 23 to 24 grains; and, if more than 1,000,000 ears per acre be claimed, it must be at the expense of their contents. ”

“ The seed-cups ordinarily used in drilling wheat are so large that they deliver in bunches of grains, consisting of six or seven, which fall together within a very small area, from which a less produce will be obtained than if it had been occupied by a single grain. The additional grains are thus not only wasted, but are positively injurious. By using seed-cups which are only large enough to contain one grain at a time, a stream of single grains is delivered, and the desired object, viz., the depositing of grains singly, at once attained. ”

“ The harvest being over at least a fortnight earlier, would be of immense advantage in clearing the land. Seasons are frequently most unfavorable to late-sown cereals, but they are scarcely ever so to early-sown ones. On well-farmed lands, on the common practice, the average contents of the wheat-ears must be from 20 to 30. Were it grown on Major Hallett's system, the average contents would be, at the very least, from 40 to 60, and far more likely from 60 to 90; for under such a system so small an ear as one of 40 grains is quite the exception. ”

“ Today, the area in corn is not less than 65,000,000 acres; 12·50 bushels increase, at 40 cents per bushel, would be five dollars an acre, or $325,000,000: $1,075,000,000 of additional food in the short space of five years would give a new impetus to the milling trade in this country, and the hog-business would grow with a rapidity out of all proportion to its past career. Neither steel nor electricity can promise anything so great in so short a time, and no reform accomplished in this century will be able to measure this one. ”

“ Frequent trials have also been made of the comparative power of large and small, plump and thin grains, and, in the case of oats, which produce a small grain attached to a large one, trials as to their respective powers—with uniform results, viz., that, in good grains of the same pedigree, neither mere size nor situation in the ear supplies any indication of the superior grain. ”

“ And this increase of the contents of the ears would be obtained without any diminution of their number; the crop, in fact, would be doubled where now fairly good farming yields 30 bushels to the acre. These promises are not illusions, since a good many men in European countries, and in the United States also, have accomplished great results in agriculture by the application of commonly accepted principles of science. ”

“ When the hunger for large areas abates, we may hope to see attention paid to better cultivation. The toil and misery, disappointment and mortification of skimming broad acres for meager results must give place to farming for profit. ”

“ In the Washington Department of Agriculture and in several other parts of the country, pedigree cereals have been used, but the results have not been taken much advantage of. The experimentalists of the State College farming-stations are especially qualified to lead in so important a work. The time is not far distant when intensive rather than extensive culture must be the rule of American farming. Already, in the East and in the South, men are finding it pays better to cultivate 100 acres well than 300 acres carelessly. ”

“ On the contrary, if improvement can be secured without them, it will be immensely greater when aided by them. But while the purchase of good seed of pedigree stock in small quantity, though the farmer bought it at six dollars (Major Hallett frequently obtains five) , would be a very economical proceeding if he does not use more than two gallons, the cost of which would only be one dollar and a half per acre, whereas buying common seed at one dollar, and using two to three bushels, involves a greater outlay. ”

“ His wealth and happiness consist not in the number of his acres so much as in the principles of his farm practice. He will discover, as many of his confrères have already done, that the future of American agriculture will be determined by the extent to which fundamental truths of science are applied. ”

“ All the 1 conditions of time and space being fulfilled, we can obtain from a single parent-grain as many ears as are ordinarily obtained from twenty grains, with this most important advantage, viz.: these ears being produced from plants which have attained (or nearly so) perfect development of their growth, contain more than double the common number of grains, and their contents may be largely increased by the continued annual selection of the most vigorous parent-grains. ”