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The Swiss wheat-breeder Risler made an experiment which goes to prove the certainty of the explanation given by Rimpau. He observed on his farm at Saleves near the lake of Geneva that after a lapse of time the "Galland wheat" deteriorated and assumed, as was generally believed, the characters of the local sorts.
Among those who have opened the way for thorough and more scientific treatment are to be mentioned Rimpau and Von Rumker of Germany and W.M. Hays of America. Von Rumker is to be considered as the first writer, who sharply distinguished between two phases of methodical breeding-selection. One side he calls the production of new forms, the other the improvement of the breed.
Rimpau has dealt at large with the phenomenon as it occurs in the northern and middle parts of Germany. Even Rivett's "Bearded wheat," which was introduced from England as a fine improved variety, and has become widely distributed throughout Germany, cannot keep itself pure. It is found mingled almost anywhere with the old local varieties, which it was destined to supplant.
Through the kindness of the late Mr. Rimpau, a well known German breeder of sugar-beet varieties, I obtained specimens from seed of a native wild locality near Bukharest. The plants produced quite woody roots, showing almost no sugar tissue at all. Woody layers of strongly developed fibrovascular strands were seen to be separated one from another only by very thin layers of parenchymatous cells.
Broad and narrow leaves are considered to be differentiating marks between Beta vulgaris and Beta patula, but even here a wide range of forms seem to occur. Rimpau, Proskowetz, Schindler and others have made cultures of beets from wild localities in order to discover a hypothetical common ancestor of all the present cultivated types.
In order to get a closer insight into the causes of this confused condition of ordinary races, Rimpau made some observations on Rivett's wheat. He found that it suffers from frost during winter more than the local German varieties, and that from various causes, alien seeds may accidentally, and not rarely, become mixed with it.
Here it regulates the struggle of the selected varieties and improved races with the older types, and even with the wild species. In a previous lecture I have detailed the rapid increase of the wild oats in certain years, and described the experiments of Risler and Rimpau in the running out of select varieties. The agency is always the same.
This mixture seemed to have the advantage of keeping up an average value of the larger number of the characters, which either from their nature or from their apparent unimportance had necessarily to be neglected. After ten years of continuous labor, the rye of Rimpau caught the attention of his neighbors, being manifestly better than that of ordinary sowings.
Rimpau I had the good fortune of visiting more than once between 1875 and 1878, was situated in the middle of his farm, at some distance from the dwellings. Of course it was treated with more care, and especially kept in better conditions of fertility than was possible for the fields at large.
The experiment was started in the year 1866, at which time Rimpau collected the most beautiful heads from among his fields, and sowed their kernels in his experiment garden. From this first culture the whole race was derived.
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