Opinions of Experts
IMPROVEMENT OF VARIETIES. -  The best we can do is to continue experimenting and cross with definite aims in view, selecting those for parents in which a marked defect is not found in both. The experimenter should select with judgment and a purpose, the same as in breeding to improve animals. No doubt many fine berries have been obtained from chance seedlings, but enough, I think, has been done to show that better results are reached with thought and care in selecting the parents for a cross. We cannot tell what mixture may be crossing in the blood of some of our domestic animals, but if we continue breeding them we shall often find out. In several hundred seedling strawberries at the college a few years ago appeared about half a dozen of the White Alpine strawberries, not one of which grew among the parents from which seeds were selected. Cultivation and a different soil may not improve a wild plant any, but the seeds of such a plant are more likely to produce a great variety than seeds of a wild plant in its native place, and seeds of a cultivated variety are still more likely to produce plants much unlike each other.
PROF. W. J. BEAL.