Fig. 10. A Malformed or Degenerate Swede. Two-thirds of nat. size.
Now had we been going to grow the best of seed, we should of course have selected the best-shaped roots for our purpose; but in this case, as will be seen, the most viciously formed examples were chosen.
Both of the examples whose portraits we have here given, were planted in our private garden (where, it is right to say, they were the only seeding specimens), in due time their seed ripened, which was carefully collected and stored.
Early in April, 1861, these seeds were sown in our experimental plots, without manure, in the following order:—
| Plot | a. | Seed obtained from the malformed parsnip, [fig. 9]. |
| b. | Seed of Student parsnip of the same year as that of plot a. | |
| c. | Seed of malformed swede. |
The plot b was sown by way of comparison, and we can only regret that no plot of good swede seed was sown with the same object, and we must, therefore, compare with a piece of swedes in an adjoining field.
The following are the tabulated results:—
TABLE OF RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS.