48 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of the seed of those sorts so that those who wish to engage in the 

 production of such specialties may call upon us for a small quantity 

 of stock seed from which to produce their own crop of seed. We 

 do not anticipate growing seed in a commercial way. All we hope 

 to do is to maintain small plantations of distinctive strains of field 

 and forcing house products from which commercial growers may 

 secure sufficient stock seed to enable them to grow seed for com- 

 mercial purposes. 



The only thing we ask is a pledge of good faith, good cultivation, 

 and an honest endeavor to keep the strains pure, but if for any 

 reason the seeds become mixed or lose cast the grower should return 

 to headquarters for a fresh supply of stock seed. 



Our endeavor is to maintain the strains true to type from year 

 to year, so that growers in any locality using these strains of 

 seed will be able to offer to the market, provided the cultural condi- 

 tions are the same, a product of the same grade each year. This 

 we anticipate will work a revolution along some lines which will 

 probably be slow and may cause some little inconvenience, but 

 eventually it will be to the advantage of the industry. 



The outdoor sorts with which we are working will be handled 

 in exactly the same way. We are endeavoring to produce strains 

 which are uniform in character and which come so true that one 

 using the seed will be justified in expecting 95 per cent of the 

 product to be identical in character. In the case of cabbage we 

 are endeavoring to overcome the heavy annual loss, amounting in 

 many cases to 40 per cent or more, from the admixture of late sorts 

 or those off in type, from shooting to seed and from lack of uni- 

 formity in the period of maturity of the predominant type in the 

 mixture. For at best most of our so-called varieties are only 

 mixtures. They are not even worthy the title of a homogeneous 

 mixture unless we were to admit that the homogeneity consists of a 

 conglomeration of all possible types. Some of the commercial 

 truck fields one sees would make him a convert to this belief. 

 The aim is to place at the disposal of the trade as well as to the 

 growers stock seed from which they may hope to grow a crop that 

 will produce 95 merchantable heads from every 100 plants set in 

 the field, all of which can be harvested in two cuttings. This 

 should ultimately come to be the government standard for all 



