XX11 THE WHYS AND WHEREFORES 



onions was introduced under the name of "Prizetaker." 

 At that time I had the advantage of the use of as fine 

 onion land as the sun ever shone upon, a fairly fertile 

 soil in Monmouth county, New Jersey. I always 

 made it a practice to test all promising novelties. The 

 Prizetaker onion was one of them. It was one of the 

 comparatively few novelties which have lasting value. 

 It was above all others the one which made the testing 

 of novelties so profitable. I could better have afforded 

 to pay $500 or even $1000 for this test of the Prize- 

 taker onion, than miss the chance to invent "the new 

 onion culture." This is mentioned, to prove, en 

 passant, the practical value of novelty tests in general. 

 In short, even the first test of the Prizetaker onion, 

 although grown in the old way, by sowing seed in 

 open ground in early spring, resulted eminently satis- 

 factorily. In the fall of that year I had the prettiest, 

 most perfect onions, of reasonably large size, imag- 

 inable, and I became so enthusiastic over this novelty, 

 that I then described the new variety in agricultural 

 papers as "the king of all onions.*' 



Even the next year, in 1889, seed could only be 

 obtained in very small quantities, and this at high 

 prices. In order to make every seed count, and know- 

 ing how easily onions can be transplanted, I sowed the 

 seed in hotbed in March, and transplanted to open 

 ground early in May. 



The results were again so gratifying, the bulbs so 

 large and attractive, and their quality so much admired 

 by all who had a chance to test them, that acquaintances 

 and neighbors were infected with my enthusiasm about 

 the new onion and the new way of growing it. Among 

 them was a la.d of fifteen or sixteen summers, with the 

 same yearning for pocket money which we expect to 

 be the natural inheritance of all other boys. The ap- 

 parent ease with which these large and salable bulbs 



