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crop has been proved by the experience of centuries. Sometimes this 

 change of seed means bringing in a variety previously cultivated 

 there by bringing it from some other place more or less distant. 



To illustrate: Potatoes grow well as far south as Louisiana, the 

 Bermudas, and other warm climates, if the seed is yearly brought 

 from a cooler region. The same fact is true of peas, and there are 

 large importations of seed peas from Canada to the United States 

 every year. Most garden vegetables behave in a similar way, and on 

 this fact the modern business of growing garden seeds is largely 

 founded. In Connecticut, onion seed is imported from Tripoli. The 

 first crop grown from this seed is of such excellent quality that the 

 trouble and expense oi the importation are justified; but if the cul- 

 tivation is continued from seed produced by the American crop, in a 

 few years the onions degenerate to the size of acorns. The constant 

 sending of the seeds of squashes and other garden vines from the 

 New England States and other places east of the Appalachians to 

 the fertile prairie soils of the West is another familiar illustration, 

 and similar facts have been observed all over the world. Melon seeds 

 from Tibet are taken every year to Kashmir, and produce fine fruit 

 weighing from 4 to 10 pounds; but vines growing from the seed 

 of melons produced thus in Kashmir yield the next year fruit 

 weighing but 2 or 3 pounds. Seed of the sea -island cotton have 

 been carried to every cotton-producing country of the world, but the 

 variety rapidly degenerates in every place yet tried distant from its 

 original home, and if the excellency of the fiber is kept up elsewhere 

 it is only done by the use of fresh seed. 



Now, it often happens that such a variety, specially prepared for 

 a region by a long process of adaptation, may be better suited to it 

 than any new one, and in such cases no increase of crop follows a 

 change of seed. For example, heavy oats taken from the cool, moist 

 climates of Canada or northern Europe, used as seed in the north- 

 ern or middle United States, usually produce at first a crop weigh- 

 ing more per bushel than that produced from home-grown seed. 

 But in various places, notably so on Long Island, where special 

 varieties have long been grown from seed carefully selected as to 

 weight until this weight reaches that which is produced from foreign 

 seed, no increase of weight is obtained by any change of seed. 

 This appears to be the case in several localities reported. Another 

 example to the point is in the local varieties of corn sometimes culti- 

 vated on farms in New England and the Middle States. Where a 

 single variety has been cultivated for a man's lifetime in the same 

 neighborhood, or even on the same farm each year, the seed having 

 been carefully selected and prepared until no further improvement is 

 reached by such selection, here it often happens that such home-bred 

 local variety yields better than any variety introduced from without. 

 But it also happens that, having' been so long purely bred, it is of 

 especial value in mixed planting, as already described". 



