chap. III.] Cabbages. 113 



had reached me at Harrisburgh in Pennsylvania ; and 



Eartly of plants, the seeds of which had been given me 

 y Mr. James Paul, Senior, of Bustleton, as I was 

 on my return home. And this gave me a pretty good 

 opportunity of ascertaining the fact as to the degene- 

 rating of cabbage seed. Mr. Paul, who attended very 

 minutely to all such matters ; who took great delight 

 in his garden ; who was a reading as well as a prac- 

 tical farmer, told me, when he gave me the seed, that 

 it would not produce loaved cabbages so early as my 

 own seed would ; for, that, though he had always se- 

 lected the earliest heads for seed, the seed degenerated, 

 and the cabbages regularly came to perfection later 

 and later. He said, that he never should save cab- 

 bage seed himself; but, that it was such chance-work 

 to buy of seedsmen, that he thought it best to save some 

 at any rate. In this case, all the plants from the En- 

 glish seed produced solid loaves by the 24lh of June, 

 while, from the plants of the Pennsylvania seed, we 

 we had not a single solid loaf till the 28th of July, and, 

 from the cliief part of them, not till mid-August. 



1G9. This is a great matter. Not only have you 

 the food earlier, and so much earlier, from the genuine 

 seed, but your ground is occupied so much less time 

 by the plants. The plants very soon showed, by their 

 appearance, what would be the result; for, on the 

 2nd of June, Miss Sarah Paul, a daughter of IMr. James 

 Paul, saw the plants, and Avhile those from the English 

 seed were even then beginning to loave, those from her 

 father's seed were nothing more than bunches of wide 

 spreading leaves, having no appearance of forming a 

 head. However, they succeetled the plants from the 

 English seed ; and, the whole, besides what were used 

 in the House, Mere given to the animals. As many of 

 die vhite loaves as were wanted for the purpose Mere 

 boiled for soms and small pigs, and the rest were given 

 to lean pigs, and the horn-cjittle : and a fine resource 

 they Mere ; for, so dry was the Mcather, and the devas- 

 tations of the grass-hoppers so great, that Me had scarcely 

 any grass in pny part of the land ; and, if I had not 

 had these cabbages, I must have resorted to Indian 

 Com, or Grain of some sort. 



