Sweet Peas. 



213 



means of which they are freed of their impurities or the tendency 

 still to sport. If desired variations do not appear, then the operator 

 may endeavor to start it off by a radical change of soil or treatment, 

 or possibly by crossing. All this means that the cultivator must 

 become intimately familiar with his subject before he can expect to 

 make much headway in the origination of novelties. So it has come 

 that the modern improved plants owe their development largely to 

 one or two careful and ])atient persons in each generation. 



The sweet pea has had but one genius. He is Henry Eckford, 

 who for twenty years has given his attention to this plant upon his 



^.^.^f 



73.— Henry Eckford. 



garden-farm at Wem, in Shropshire, England. He has given us 

 the greater number of our best improved varieties. " When I first 

 took up the sweet pea," he writes, "there were six or eight distinct 

 varieties in cultivation, and experts in the art, as far as I could 

 learn, had come to the conclusion that it could not be further im- 

 proved, and in the first two or three generations of the work it 

 appeared a fair conclusion ; but I sliould say that I had been for 

 many years working on the improvement of various florist flowers, 

 and which had proved so eminently successful that a first rebuff did 

 not deter me from further attempts." In our own country, the 



