Calling all minor units within the botanic species by
the common name of varieties, without regard to the distinction between
elementary species and retrograde varieties, the principle is designated
by the term of "variety-testing." This testing of varieties is now, as
is universally known, one of the most important lines of work of the
agricultural experiment stations. Every state and every region, in some
instances even the larger farms, require a separate variety of corn, or
wheat, or other crops. They must be segregated from among the hundreds
of generally cultivated forms, within each single botanic species. Once
found, the type may be ameliorated according to the local conditions
[96] and needs, and this is a question of improvement.
The fact that our cultivated plants are commonly mixtures of different
sorts, has not always been known. The first to recognize it seems to
have been the Spanish professor of botany, Mariano Lagasca, who
published a number of Spanish papers dealing with useful plants and
botanical subjects between 1810 and 1830, among them a catalogue of
plants cultivated in the Madrid Botanical Garden. Once when he was on a
visit to Colonel Le Couteur on his farm in Jersey, one of the Channel
Islands off the coast of France, in discussing the value of the fields
of wheat, he pointed out to his host, that they were not really pure and
uniform, as was thought at that time, and suggested the idea that some
of the constituents might form a larger part in the harvest than others.
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