XXIV THE WHYS AND WHEREFORES 



before the reader, which is an entirely new work, give 

 evidence of the progress that has been made, and con- 

 tain all the information about the new plan now 

 available. 



I claim some credit for the discovery of this novel 

 method. Still I admit I am not the first person who 

 transplants onions. On a small scale, specimens have 

 been grown in England in a similar way for exhibition ; 

 various growers have for generations employed the 

 transplanting process for filling out gaps in their onion 

 rows ; and others have practiced a plan almost identical 

 with mine in growing early onions for bunching. But 

 to apply the principle to field culture, to reduce the 

 crude plan to a system, and to practice, advocate and 

 teach it in advance of all others that, I claim, is my 

 merit. 



Professor W. J. Green, of the Ohio experiment 

 station, has worked out this same problem, simul- 

 taneously with me, but entirely independently. Nei- 

 ther of us knew that the other was following the same 

 track. The first, though brief, description of the novel 

 method appeared in How to Make the Garden Pay, 

 written by me in autumn, 1889, and published at 

 the beginning of 1890. Professor Green, soon after, 

 gave his version of the new onion culture in a bulletin 

 issued by the Ohio experiment station, and since then 

 the new method has been the subject of innumerable 

 newspaper articles, notices in bulletins and in agricul- 

 tural books. 



In my attempts to reach a maximum crop, I have 

 often met difficulties which many other growers will 

 not have to face. For a long time the privilege of 

 selecting ideal conditions of soil and locality for my 

 operations had been withheld from me, and I have 

 had to make the best of circumstances and surround- 

 ings in which I happened to be placed by accident or 



