One of the wonders of modern science is this story of the development of new plant species and improvement in the best of the old, by the skillful processes of plant breeding. Notable also has been the improvement in American horses, cattle, swine and poultry, developed by the same scientific principles. Projected efficiency, or breeding power to beget valuable progeny, is the central idea. Simple selection is the method. Out of a large number of animals the phenomenal individual is selected for his notable capacity for reproducing in his offspring his own desirable characteristics. Thus the best blood is multiplied and the less desirable is discarded. Sometimes by close inbreeding the eugenic process has been hastened. In this way scientific stock raisers have been able practically to make to order animals with any desired quality. For instance, the great demand for bacon in England has been met by a masterly bit of agricultural statesmanship, for which Mr. John Dryden, chief of the Canadian Agricultural Department, is responsible. After careful study and experiment, the Yorkshire and Tamworth breeds of hogs were crossed and a special breed developed especially valuable for bacon with exceptionally long sides of uniform thickness and with alternating layers of fat and lean. Selected bacon made to order!
New breeds of sheep have been developed which have combined phenomenal wool-producing power with superior meat production; similarly short-horn cattle with great milk-giving capacity and beef production; and more remarkable still have been the results in horse breeding. In spite of all the motor-cycles and automobiles, the horse is becoming more and more useful, because more highly civilized and specialized. The breeders know how to build up horse-flesh to suit your special needs for draft horse, family horse, trotter or pacer, with any desired form, proportions or talent, almost as accurately as a druggist compounds prescriptions! The wonderful possibilities involved challenge our imagination. Among the results of this stock-raising strategy we ought to expect not only happier and richer farmers, but better and cheaper food and clothing for all classes of people. The very fact that the business is now on a scientific basis has appealed to students and is attracting men of large abilities who see the opportunity to better rapidly, year by year, the live-stock quality of the whole country.
In the field of plant breeding these marvelous results are more rapid and startling because of the wider range of selection. Hybridization, the crossing of different species, has accomplished much more than simple selection. Dr. William Saunders of Canada succeeded in crossing the Ladoga and Fife varieties of wheat and secured a wheat which was earlier than Fife and yielded better than Ladoga. Likewise, Luther Burbank was able to produce a hybrid walnut by crossing the English and Black walnuts; and Webber and Swingle developed the new fruits called tangerines and citranges by crossing sweet oranges with carefully selected specimens of the wild fruit. Experiments last year in blueberry culture developed luscious berries a half inch in diameter. Possibilities in berry development are almost unlimited, especially by crossing with hardy wild varieties.
Peach raisers have two great obstacles to sure success: drought in the Southwest and frost toward the North. Science is helping them to compete successfully with the severities of nature. A hardy wild peach has been found in Northern China and grafting on this stock has produced (this last year) the hardiest peach in Iowa; while another strain bids fair to meet the drought-resisting needs of the Southwest fruit grower.
Our agricultural explorers are searching the world for new varieties which can be used in hybridizing to perfect the American species. For instance, a wild wheat has been found in Palestine which requires very little water. So a specialist in acclimatization was sent directly to the slopes of Mount Hermon to discover its possibilities for American dry farming. If the plant doctors succeed in developing wheat which can be raised in our arid wilderness, it would repay a thousand fold the expense of a round-the-world trip. The possible profits in skillful plant breeding are almost unlimited. Burbank is quoted as asserting: “The right man under favorable conditions can make one dollar yield a million dollars in plant breeding.” In 1908 the Minnesota Experiment Station had spent $40,000 in breeding the cereal grains. The agricultural department is authority for the opinion that “the increased production is estimated at a thousand fold, or $40,000,000.”[23]
The justly famous navel oranges of California can all be traced to two scions sent from the U. S. Department of Agriculture some years ago. The Wealthy apple, which thrives in the cold north better than any other good variety, goes back to the early struggles of Peter Gideon at Lake Minnetonka, who faced the Minnesota winter almost penniless, coatless and with a family dependent upon him; but had faith enough to invest his hard-earned dollars in selected apple-seed from his far off home in Maine. The largest single contributor to the wealth produced by scientific breeding is said to be the Burbank potato. The van-guard of American experimenters are ranging the world and bringing home large-fruited jujubes (as good as dates) from the dry fields of Central Asia; seedless Chinese persimmons which have just been successfully fruited in North Carolina; a Japanese salad plant and a vegetable called udo which is similar to asparagus; edible roots called aroids which thrive in swampy land where the potato rots; hardy alfalfa from central Asia successfully crossed with our own varieties for our cold northwest; drought-resisting cherries, apricots with sweet kernels, Caucasian peaches, olives hardy in zero temperatures, mangoes from Porto Rico, the Paradise apple which grows wild in the Caucasus, the Slew Abrikose, an apricot as smooth as the nectarine, and wild strawberries fruiting in February on the dry cliffs of western Asia which, through cross-breeding may help to carry our native strawberry many miles still farther to the north.
The story is endless; but these items suggest to us the thoroughly statesmanlike way in which our agricultural leaders are increasing year by year the possibilities of our soil in spite of all drawbacks of condition and climate. No wonder they are already prophesying that our annual agricultural production will before long reach twenty billions. When it comes, a large part of the credit must be given to the skillful agricultural scientists who are furnishing all progressive farmers these newer species of plants and animals which are superseding the inferior varieties.
Irrigation and the Problem of the Desert
When it is the problem of sterility, it is hopeless. But usually it is merely the problem of aridity; which is only a challenge to enterprise. Much of our “Great American Desert,” as the old geography used to describe it, is in reality the most fertile of all soils; no wonder it can easily be made to “blossom as the rose.”