44 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



have been grown, there has not been developed in the whole 

 world more than 100 really distinct varietal types, at least 

 not more than that number which were sufficiently desirable 

 ones to warrant their continued cultivation ; neither has there 

 been a constant succession of distinct sorts, the better ones 

 taking the place of inferior. Some of the types which have 

 been grown fifty, one hundred, five hundred years, but under 

 different names, being still in use, nothing really superior to 

 them having been developed, yet the comparison of these two 

 bulletins shows that in less than a decade we have at least 

 150 new names, — more names than there have been really 

 distinct types developed in two thousand years. 



We give an illustration of one way in which this comes 

 about, certain facts known to us, but withholding the name 

 of the variety and dealers. A seedsman found in the hands 

 of a German gardener a strain of lettuce which had been 

 very carefully selected and grown by this family for three 

 generations. For at least seventy-five years these people had 

 grown only this one particular type, the description of which 

 had been handed down from father to son, and they had very 

 carefully kept it within their own family. Because of some 

 special obligation the gardener gave some of the seed to the 

 seedsman, who found that it was a remarkably uniform and 

 even stock of a type which had been introduced some twenty 

 years before, and was then being extensively grown under the 

 name A. He grew a stock from the seed the German gave 

 him, and to distinguish this from the other called it B, and 

 under that name sold it to three different seedsmen, one of 

 whom catalogued it as C, one as D and the other as E, each 

 ignorant that it was being listed under other names; and 

 thus a certain type which had been in cultivation at least 

 seventy-five years, and no one knows how much longer, was 

 sold under at least four distinct and new names, and how 

 many more we do not know. A well-known seed grower as- 

 sured me that he used the same lot of stock seed to grow the 

 cabbage seed which he furnished seven different seedsmen to 

 be sold under seven distinct names; and I might multiply 

 such instances that have come to my personal knowledge in- 

 definitely. 



