46 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1891. 



cultivation of lettuce, 1 am quite sure that my catalogue of ques- 

 tions would outnumber the answers which I should dare to give 

 as the correct ones to questions that might be proposed to me. 

 Nevertheless, I have, I trust, learned some things, at least, as to 

 what ought not to be done in lettuce growing. 



And as one of the first and most essential things that a novice 

 in any trade or profession needs to know is what he ought not 

 do, such negative instruction may be of value to those who have 

 not already learned it in the costly school of experience. My 

 advice to one proposing to begin this business and to follow it as a 

 means of livelihood would be: (1.) Hfot to undertake it at his own 

 expense until he first serves a thorough apprenticeship of several 

 years, with the best lettuce grower that he can find. Even if he 

 should have to give his services, and pay his own board, and pay 

 tuition for several years, it will bo cheaper than to undertake it 

 on his own account, particularly on a scale sufiicient for a living 

 business, provided he understood the intricacies of the trade him- 

 self. Such a course will cost him more money than it need to 

 for a full collegiate and university course of literary and scientific 

 instruction. 



(2.) Do not think you can start into the business on a busi- 

 ness scale and avoid such losses by hiring a professional expert to 

 manage the business for you, and at the same time teach you 

 the intricacies of the trade. Competent men cannot be hired for 

 that business, at least, not by one who is himself a novice. 

 Having hired the most competent man that you can secure, in all 

 the States, and spread out your property for him to manage, the 

 first yon will realize as a tangible result of your enterprise will 

 be a loss of $500 or $1,000 at a stroke by reason of his blun- 

 ders, or rather his ignorance. 



A few years ago, a man having a lucrative business purchased 

 an adjoining vegetable farm, with a greenhouse and four or five 

 hundred hot-bed sashes, and proposed to make a little money out 

 of lettuce growing, by hiring an expert market gardener to 

 operate his glass on shares, while he himself continued his former 

 business. He asked me to refer him to the right kind of a man 

 for such an enterprise, if I could. I asked him if he himself had 

 a practical knowledge of growing lettuce under glass. He said 



