ACCLIMATING AN ERROR. 269 



do not say lie would — but lie miglit in a few generations 

 obtain a liaidier sort of pea. 



Let us look at brocoli. Many sorts stand ordinary winters, 

 and in poor soil nearly every sort will ; but we once went 

 over a piece of brocoli after a frost that had killed and rotted 

 acres, and observed two or three plants that seemed almost 

 unaffected. We advised the gardener to save the seed from 

 these, as they were evidently more hardy than all the rest ; 

 but he would not promise, for vegetables were so scarce, that 

 he feared he should be obliged to send them to table. 

 Whether he did or not, we never heard ; but if he did not, a 

 valuable acquisition to this class of vegetable was lost ; for it 

 is by taking advantage of these sports of nature that we 

 obtain new varieties ; and those who set themselves to work 

 in good earnest for anything, must be on the look-out for 

 whatever is new, and particularly if an advance upon the road 

 Ave wish to go. iN'ature will do for us what we cannot do for 

 ourselves, but we must be always ready to profit by it ; but, 

 in the way of procuring hardy races of plants, we can only 

 succeed by taking advantage of the smallest difference, and 

 saving carefully the seed from any plant that makes the 

 smallest approach. Every step we advance gives new hope 

 for a further progTess, and it is impossible to set bounds to an 

 advance of any kind. It was by saving seed from the pansies 

 with the broadest petals that the florists approached by 

 degrees the circular form required; although it was, at the 

 time it was first attempted, a seeming impossibility, from the 

 natural form of the flower, to even make a step towards it. 

 So it is with attempts to obtain more hardy kinds of any 

 tender plant. It will not be done by sowing things in a 

 season that will not try them, but by trying them in un- 

 toward seasons. Solving peas in the spring will never show 

 us whether they will stand the frost, but sowing in the 

 autumn. We should do the same by cauliflowers : get the 

 plants forward as if they were to be under hand-glasses, 

 plant them out in open situations, make up your mind to 

 sacrifice them, and if there be but a shade of difference in any 

 one plant, seize upon it as a step in advance, and having seen 

 it stand the first frost which killed others, risk not the loss of 

 it by a more severe one, but save the seed, raise the produce 

 the next season to undergo the same trial, and perform the 

 same penance over again ; never mind sacrificing the bulk to 



