SAVIKG SEED. 75 



society notice, which is generally copied in all the agri- 

 cultural or horticultural journals, but the plant is very 

 likely to appear the next year under a halt' dozen new 

 names, though of course it can never again be registered. 

 However, this renaming does not prevent it from being 

 sold at very high prices, for the more extravagant the 

 name and the higher the price the more dupes to buy it. 

 Every gardener can save seed by permitting certain of 

 his plants to stand long enough, but usually such a 

 course does not pay, for the reason that garden space is 

 generally so valuable that crops reaching edible condi- 

 tion must be cleared away to make room for others in 

 their season, and again, that on fields of limited extent, 

 crops of various sorts of peas, beans, corn, melons, 

 squash and cucumber become each within its own family 

 hybridized, or interbred, so that crops grown from seed 

 raised in the garden present in one lot all the qualities 

 of the various crops of the preceding year, and alwa3^s 

 the poor qualities will be found to jDredominate, as with 

 vegetable, like animal life, the coarse, ill bred types are 

 the most precocious and prolific. Still, it is occasionally 

 worth the time and labor of the amateur to experiment 

 in seed saving, for it certainly affords interesting instruc- 

 tion, whether the return be profitable or not, and it can- 

 not be doubted that the very cross-fertilizing, consequent 

 upon the crowding of crops in gardens, has been the 

 origin of many valuable h3^brids. This cross-fertilizing 

 occurs during the flowering season, and results from the 

 pollen, a light powder, produced by the organs of the 

 male flower of one sort of bean, corn, melon, or other 

 plant, falling upon the female organ of the flower of some 

 other variety of the same family. The pollen, carried 

 by the wind, or borne on the bodies of insects, may be 

 carried for miles. Corn has been known to intermix 

 when planted hundreds of j'ards apart, or on opposite 

 sides of a dense woodland, or on opposite sides of a river 



