54 Third Annual Report 



"THE IMPORTANCE OF WISE SELECTION OF THE 



VARIETIES OF VEGETABLE SEED BEST SUITED 



TO THE NEEDS OF THE PLANTER." 



w. w. Tracy, Washington, d. c. 



(I am very glad to have the opportunity of speaking to you, 

 and there is no state in the Union that is dearer to me than 

 Vermont. I didn't have the honor of being born here, but my 

 parents were and my early boyhood days were spent here in 

 Vermont, — so for that reason I am glad to speak to you. When 

 I was a boy in college they used to say that "Tracy was all right, 

 but he talked so much with his mouth that he didn't say any- 

 thing." Now, I have got something I want to say to you, and 

 so that my mouth won't run away with me I have written down 

 some of the things I want to say, but I assure you the thoughts 

 come from my heart as much as if they were spontaneous.) 



In considering the selection of varieties of vegetables for 

 special locations and uses, it is important that we first come to 

 a clear understanding of what we mean by variety. In the case 

 of plants progagated by division, whenever one finds an origina- 

 tion or mutation, whether it comes from a bud or a seed, which 

 he thinks is of such distinctive merit that he propagates it by 

 budding, cutting or other forms of division and designates it by 

 a name, all of these plants so propagated constitute a variety. 

 When any plant belongs to a variety or not is not determined by 

 its character but by its origin for although the plants of the 

 same origin must be of practically the same character all 

 the plants of practically the same character may not be 

 of the same origin. I think our courts have decided that in 

 the case of plants propagated by division, though a plant can not 

 be distinguished from those of any certain variety, it can not be 

 said to be of that variety unless it traces its origin to the original 

 single mutation. A grape which can not be distinguished in any 

 way from a Concord can not properly be called a Concord grape 

 unless it was produced by a vine which was propagated from the 

 original Concord vine and is in reality, indeed, a part of it. In 

 the case of plants propagated by seed, variety means something 

 quite dififerent. Here whenever anyone secures a lot of seed, all 

 of which he is reasonably sure will produce plants of a certain 

 definite and named type, these seed are said to be of that named 

 variety, but in just so far as they fail to produce plants of the 

 type and character of that sort they and the plants so produced 



