Mr. W. Beach Thomas, a most careful observer whose judgment
is trustworthy, writes a very interesting article in the Daily Mail of Thursday on the possibility of enormously increasing the yield of our corn crops. The prospects of such an increase are by no means fantastic. In the last thirty years a good oat crop has increased from forty bushels to the acre to seventy or eighty bushels. This is the result of an improved type of plant. And it seems that the plant could be improved still further,—almost out of all knowledge indeed. The reason that this is not done is that the private experimenters cannot afford to sell their best seeds. If they did they would find themselves ruined in two or three years, as all the world would soon grow its own seed, and the experimenters would lose the reward of all their expenditure and work. As it is they keep their secrets, and deal out every year seeds a little better than the last, thus just beating the world and keeping their income continual. Mr. Beach Thomas was recently shown an oat-head nearly two feet long, containing nearly a thousand grains, and a single oat-bell or panicle containing twelve grains. His argument amounts to this : that the agricultural progress of the country is being arbitrarily retarded by perhaps thirty or forty years because the Government do nothing. Whether Mr. Beach Thomas has over-estimated the possibilities of ordinary farm land or not, we agree that the Board of Agriculture ought to see that the latest facts of soience are placed at the disposal of the country.
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