DISTRIBUTION OF SEEDS. 103 



the vetch for food of cattle — a kind of lupin, likewise — the coarser grasses 

 for pasturage, or their seeds to feed poultry — the stalks of the Chinese 

 broom corn to supplant the more juicy and sweeter stem of the Indian corn 

 as forage. There may be portions of the United States, perhaps, where 

 these and similar plants may possibly be useful ; certainly they are inap- 

 plicable to the advanced culture of Massachusetts, and her gardens blossom 

 with every hardy exotic nearly cotemporaneously with her sister gardens 

 of Great Britain, thanks to the enterprise of the seedsmen of Boston, New 

 York, and Philadelphia. 



In view of these circumstances, it has seemed to me that a good step 

 could be taken towards indicating the true condition of our progress in 

 horticulture and its kindred subjects, were it the duty of some special com- 

 mittee of our Societies to furnish lists of all newly cultivated varieties of 

 fruits, flowers, seeds of the field and farm introduced to their notice from 

 year to year. Svich catalogues, either in MSS. of the Society's records, 

 or these when printed from time to time, would exhibit and furnish much 

 needed information. I regret that I have not myself made a similar record 

 of the seeds which have come under my own eye, thus sent to societies or 

 to individuals for the promotion of agriculture. This Society could do no 

 better thing than for the future to register all such gifts, whether of seeds 

 or of scions, roots, bulbs, or the like. 



The attention to this subject has likewise been called by other writers, 

 and among these the letter of David Landreth, a most practical as well as 

 scientific seedsman, to the Commissioner of Patents, contains a great deal 

 of valuable facts and suggestions. It is not a matter of private interest 

 between seed growers and seedsmen and the official department at Wash- 

 ington, because, however privately or in a business manner they may possi- 

 bly view it, the subject extends far beyond them. It helps to perpetuate 

 the too extensive ignorance of, and almost culpable indifference to, the 

 fundamental principles of all agricultural industry in those who direct 

 agricultural concerns. Too much of this exists already — and while the 

 anniversary addresses before such societies are delivered by merely schol- 

 arly men, or through political favor, rather than by the practical firmer, or 

 by the investigator of the mysteries of the vegetable kingdom or of the 

 capabilities of the soil, we shall fail to enlighten those who ought to be the 

 most interested in what they should know: and all the real advantages of 

 chemical or scientific knowledge (for there are real as well as fictitious 

 facts connected with the general subject) will continue to be regarded as 

 rather matters of fancy or of theory, than of practical worth. " Of what 

 use," is the expression of the argument, " to define by name every species 

 of plant, to arrange in consecutive order every kind of organized life, from 

 the minute speck of mouldiness or the tiniest bug, to the most gigantic of 

 such forms ? " And the pertinence of the query seems in favor of the 

 doubt, until the spirit of such ignorance extends to sowing the farm or the 

 garden with weeds and useless foreign trash — to repent, too late, at the 

 want of a little wisdom to save us from much of such results. Some one 

 has said " that a weed is a plant out of place," and an excellent definition 



