38 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



when shaken out all these seeds were saved and put into the 

 lot. The best lettuce seed, I think, are the first ones that 

 develop on a plant. When we find one plant under similar 

 conditions with its neighbor varying or affected by disease, 

 there must be some cause. We often find a groat many things 

 which we are unable, even the practical and theoretical man 

 combined, to solve and answer in a satisfactory manner. 



I believe there is need of hearty co-operation and more of 

 a brotherhood between the experiment stations and practical 

 growers, — that we need to get a little closer together. I had 

 a little experience with cucumbers last year. I called at a 

 greenhouse in New Hampshire, where I found four or five 

 diseases of the cucumber. I never saw such a crop of cucum- 

 bers in all my life. It was a total failure, and the man lost 

 several thousand dollars on it. I took the matter to the sta- 

 tion, and they were unfamiliar with it. They took it up, and 

 at the present time are working on some of these diseases. 

 Such things should be brought to the immediate attention of 

 the specialists who are supposed to be trying to help the 

 practical growers solve such problems. If they are not, it is 

 largely your fault as growers for not getting together and 

 bringing these things to their attention and soliciting their 

 assistance. 



Prof. II. F. Tompsoist (of Amherst). I have been study- 

 ing market gardening, and in looking around have been struck 

 with the business-like aspect of the calling. I was at Mr. 

 Endlong's plant in Rhode Island recently, one of the largest 

 garden plants in the country, lie is more in the florist busi- 

 ness now, but everything there was perfectly systematized, 

 business from top to bottom. The general farmer's practice 

 has been a hit-or-miss system, and the market gardener has 

 forged ahead because he has been a business man. 



My work now is at the Agricultural College, where wo 

 are trying to work out something along market-garden lines, 

 trying to teach the men what market gardening is, and 

 how to go at it. I don't believe you can in the college 

 course instruct men to go out and he successful market, gar- 

 deners unless they are naturally adapted to it. You can, 



