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Show RUST-PROOF WHEAT Scientists in Race to Grow Perfect Per-fect Grain of All Kinds. Cambridge School Produces Variety That Resists Disease and Is Very Strong Frencli Hybridizers Secure Heavy Yield. London. Scientific men at Cambridge Cam-bridge who are devoting themselves to agricultural research are on the eve of establishing a proud claim made a year ago. They said that they would increase the value of wheat crops by $10 an acre. But in the race for the perfect grain wheat, barley and oats they are being pressed hard by other discoverers dis-coverers who are total disbelievers in I he Cambridge methods, and the race for the perfect grain under the different dif-ferent methods is becoming exciting. The chief competitors of Mr. Biffen. Mr. Punnett and the Cambridge school are M. Vilmorin of Paris, Mr. Burbank, who is called the California wizard, and John Garton of Warrington. John Garton and Mr. Burbank have exchanged letters, and agree that the making of the perfect grain is more or less a fluke. Mr. Garton, for example, ex-ample, produced an oat which increased in-creased the yield by ten to 20 percent., per-cent., and grew a large grain by using the wild oat, which has the smallest of all grain and was thought to be useless. Mr. Biffen, on the other hand, works wholly by system, and has two triumphs tri-umphs to his credit. He has produced a wheat absolutely proof against rust, which is the most prevalent of wheat diseases, and he has been able, by following fol-lowing the law of Mendel, to fix these new sorts in two or three years where previously the work took eight or ten. . These disease-proof wheats will be available for next harvest, and their creation has greatly excited men of science all over the world. The present position in the race is this, that the Cambridge school has produced grains which resist disease yi and are very "strong" that is, are good for milling. The French hybrid dizers and Mr. Garton have produced grains remarkable for heavy yieW.'. The achievement which is yet t.a. come is the joining together of the disease resisters and the heavy yield-ers. yield-ers. When that is done the farmer's-fortune farmer's-fortune is made, if wheat will stay near its present price. |