PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 353 



Now, turn and see how different it is with cabbages. I have spoken of 

 the root of the bean plant. Cabbages root in an entirely different way. 

 Instead of forming one root, the cabbage plants form innumerable roots 

 right along the center stem. They form a great bunch of roots, and you 

 cut one off today and in fifteen minutes there will be a formation of a callus 

 on the end of the root, and in an hour a new root will be started from the 

 end that was cut off. I have seen that, and demonstrated by my own 

 observation that, under the most favorable circumstances, in an hour 

 from the time a cabbage root is cut a new branch has started out from it. 

 It rather helps it to be cut off, because it forces it to establish a great 

 many of these branch roots, and they grow in that wa}'. In regard to the 

 stomatse, as I call them, these breathing pores that close when it is dry, 

 they are very easily worked, in the case of cabbages, and 3'ou can muti- 

 late, you can pound, you can pour water upon the cabbages without any 

 danger, as in the case of the beans; and I might go through a long list 

 of differences of that kind which exist between these two plants and also 

 about the food. I have spoken about the food that beans need, a certain 

 character of food. They are like sheep, and our cabbage is like a hog in 

 the manner and the kind of food it will take up. No one would think 

 of letting sheep follow cattle in order to get food from the waste, but hogs 

 are fed in that way with profit. In the same way, no one who knows any- 

 thing would think of putting coarse, rough, crude manure upon a bean 

 plant to improve it. You can not do anything better with the cabbage 

 plant. The two plants are as different almost as it is possible to make two 

 plants, in their likes and dislikes, and until a man comes to understand 

 those and love them and care for them just as j'ou understand the children 

 in vour familv, one of whom vou can treat one wav and one of whom vou 

 must treat another wa}-, until you get at that you can not be successful in 

 their cultivation. 



Go a little further in another respect. I am only pointing out some of 

 the different points in regard to the cultivation. I have compared my 

 beans and cabbages. Now, here are two plants, radishes and celery. I 

 plant the seed of some of the early forcing kinds, and in thirty days we 

 can pull radishes and put them upon the market. A radish in thirty days 

 will increase in weight from the seed something like one thousand times; 

 that is, the radish will, according to variety and conditions, increase from 

 the seed — I put in the seed, and thirty days from that the product of that 

 seed will be from 500 to 1000 times heavier than the seed was, taking 

 root and all together. I plant a celery seed, and in thirty days the plant 

 will onlv be from 10 to 100 times the weight of the seed. See how much 

 ■difference there is in the way those two plants start out in life. One has 

 completed its growth, practically, in the first thirty daj'S, and is ready 

 for the harvest; the other has but just bareh' commenced its existence. 

 Now, then, follow them along a little further. As you go on, your celery 

 plant every day increases in momentum of growth; that is, it commences 

 slowly but crowds forward with ever increasing rapidity until at last we 

 force it, we blanch it, as we call it, through the means of this tremendous 

 rapidity of growth, which we have established in the plant, and it is only 

 by that rapidity of growth that we can secure the nice, blanched, crisp 

 celery which we do. On the other hand, blanch a radish and it never 

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