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crop has been proved by the experience of centuries. Sometimes this 
change of seed means bringing in a variety previously cultivated 
there by bringing it from some other place more or less distant. 
To illustrate: Potatoes grow well as far south as Louisiana, the 
Bermudas, and other warm climates, if the seed is yearly brought 
from a cooler region. The same fact is true of peas, and there are 
large importations of seed peas from Canada to the United States 
every year. Most garden vegetables behave in a similar way, and on 
this fact the modern business of growing garden seeds is largely 
founded. In Connecticut, onion seed is imported from Tripoh. The 
first crop grown from this seed is of such excellent quality that the 
trouble and expense of the importation are justified; but if the cul- 
tivation is continued from seed produced by the American crop, in a 
few years the onions degenerate to the size of acorns. The constant 
sending of the seeds of squashes and other garden vines from the 
New England States and other places east of the Appalachians to 
the fertile prairie soils of the West is another familiar illustration, 
and similar facts have been observed all over the world. Melon seeds 
from Tibet are taken every year to Kashmir, and produce fine fruit 
weighing from 4 to 10 pounds; but vines growing from the seed 
of melons produced thus in Kashmir yield the next year fruit 
weighing but 2 or 3 pounds. Seed of the sea-island cotton have 
been carried to every cotton-producing country of the world, but the 
variety rapidly degenerates in every place yet tried distant from its 
original home, and if the excellency of the fiber is kept up elsewhere 
it is only done by the use of fresh seed. 
Now, it often happens that such a variety, specially prepared for 
a region by a long process of adaptation, may be better suited to it 
than any new one, and in such cases no increase of crop follows a 
change of seed. For example, heavy oats taken from the cool, moist 
climates of Canada or northern Europe, used as seed in the north- 
ern or middle United States, usually produce at first a crop weigh- 
ing more per bushel than that produced from home-grown seed. 
But in various places, notably so on Long Island, where special 
varieties have long been grown from seed “carefully selected as to 
weight until this weight reaches that which is produced from foreign 
seed, no increase of weight is obtained by any change of seed, 
This appears to be the case in several localities reported. Another 
example to the point is in the local varieties of corn sometimes culti- 
vated on farms in New England and the Middle States. Where a 
single variety has been cultivated for a man’s lifetime in the same 
neighborhood, or even on the same farm each year, the seed having 
been carefully selected and prepared until no further improvement is 
reached by such selection, here it often happens that such home-bred 
local variety yields better than any variety introduced from without. 
But it also happens that, having been so long purely bred, it is of 
especial value in mixed planting, as already described, 
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