42 The Flower Garden [Chapter 



of purchase. A few of the old favourites like the 

 Snow Queen may be bought in packets costing from 

 three to five cents and prove good value. But gener- 

 ally speaking, packets selling for less than five cents 

 are to be looked upon with suspicion. Seeds bought 

 at the grocer's or other local dealer's are likely to be 

 old or inferior stock the better class of seedsmen 

 selling direct to the consumer only. At the end of 

 every season seedsmen have a large stock left over. 

 The best concerns destroy these, but the less scrupu- 

 lous put them up as prizes for advertising purposes, 

 or sell them to the local dealers. 



Some varieties of seeds retain vitality for years, like 

 the Morning-glory, while others lose vitality in a few 

 months or weeks, like the perennial Phlox, which must 

 be sown as soon as ripe. From this it can be readily 

 seen how worthless some of the seed carried over from 

 year to year must be. As an experiment, I planted 

 under glass in the house, with more than usual care, 

 a part of one of these trial packages of twelve for a 

 quarter. From five of the packages I got just one 

 plant a Lantana, while from the sixth I grew a num- 

 ber of inferior Petunias. In striking contrast to this 

 I planted, under the same conditions, a packet of 

 Bush Hill Pioneer Cyclamen containing twelve seeds, 

 for which I paid fifty cents, and secured eleven plants, 

 every one of which lived, making four and a half 

 cents apiece for a very choice variety of Cyclamen, 

 while the one little common Lantana cost me ten cents. 



