328 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPORT. 
In the Fifth Report?® of the Station attention was concentrated 
on the cabbage. As in the cases previously mentioned the entire list 
of varieties offered by American seedsmen and many of the varie- 
ties offered by foreign seed houses were secured for planting. 
There were 196 supposedly different varieties in the list. The 
real number planted, however, was greater, since seed of the same 
variety was planted from different seedsmen. The seeds were 
planted at different periods according to their season of ripening, 
the early varieties being planted during the first week in March, 
while certain of the later sorts were planted as late as the second 
week in May. Much of the information secured was tabulated as 
in the case of the other vegetables. 
Much difficulty was found in classifying the varieties in spite of 
the fact that the number of varieties was not so great as with some 
of the other vegetables previously tested. This was due to the 
extreme variability often shown in the plant from the same sample 
of seed. The heading cabbage, in particular, was extremely vari- 
able. This variability may be due in part to impurity in the seed, 
but it is not thought to be wholly so. The writer objects to those 
varieties in which the characters are not fixed. He says: “We 
find in the writings of a prominent grower of and writer on cab- 
bages, ‘in the Wakefield cabbage the conical and flat are both 
noimal.’ Th: same author in speaking of the Stonemason cabbage 
says: ‘ Thc color of the leaves varies from a bluish green to a pea 
green and the structure from nearly smooth to much blistered.’ 
Another well known seed grower says of the Early Jersey Wake- 
field cabbage: ‘ It must be admitted it presents many conditions; it is 
early, late, pointed, round, rough, and smooth leaved.’ Admissions 
like these would seem to prove beyond question that the cabbage 
under consideration is either very poorly fixed or else from having 
been grown under very unfavorable conditions or through mixture 
with other varieties it has been permitted to deteriorate — the seed 
grower should certainly have an ideal for his varieties and this 
ideal should include not simply the part for which the plant is 
grown but the secondary characters as well.” 
The heading cabbages are divided into two main classes, the first 
including those varieties in which the leaves are smooth or only 
slightly blistered; the second, those varieties in which the foliage. 
*” Rpt. 5:179 (1886). 
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