178 MASSACHUSiETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



that in England the clhnate is such that some of their seed stock — 

 mangels and cabbages, for example — to a large extent remains out 

 all winter, and they can grow seed very cheaply on that account. 

 We have to bury such stock, and there is some loss in carrying it 

 through the winter. With the smaller varieties of cabbage, it is 

 about "hit or miss." The chances are about half against any 

 attempt to raise seed from them, simply because we must expect 

 some waste, and, as you all know, it takes the loss of but a few 

 layers of leaves to use up the heads of the smaller varieties. 



From France and Germany come, as a rule, the choicer varieties 

 of vegetable and flower seed. When they want something rather 

 extra in purity or the finest strain in the vegetable or flower seed 

 line, such as cauliflower, celery, lettuce, egg-plant or radish, our 

 seedsmen are very apt to turn towards France or Germany, rather 

 than the mother country, even though they may sometimes have to 

 pay rather a higher price for their purchase. The prices which 

 some choice seed bring would astonish you. I have paid as high 

 as $200 an ounce for choice cucumber seed. 



Sixteen years ago, statistics of seed-raising in the United States 

 were very hard to procure. There were no records in regard to it, 

 and to get my data when writing on the subject at that time I had 

 to depend upon facts obtained through correspondence with indi- 

 vidual growers. Three years ago, for the first time, the United 

 States government obtained and published the statistics of the 

 seed business. From this report we present a few interesting facts. 



David Landreth, who came to this country from Scotland in 1784, 

 a few years later established, near Philadelphia, in connection with 

 a nursery, a seed farm which is believed to have been the first in 

 this country. Up to 1850, about which time I began raising seeds, 

 there were less than nineteen seed farms in the United States, and 

 ten of these were in Connecticut. The Census of 1890 enumerated 

 596 such farms, of which Massachusetts had twenty-five, contain- 

 ing 1,221 acres. The total area of all these farms is 169,851 

 acres, valued, with tools and buildings, at $18,325,935, in 1890. 

 The acres given include those growing seed and seed stock. 



For half a century prior to 1850 New York and Connecticut 

 produced more seeds than all the other states combined. New 

 York and New Jersey grow over half the asparagus seed used in 

 the United State^.. New York, Illinois, and Michigan grow five- 

 sixths of the e ied beans ; New York, Ohio, Nebraska, and Cali- 



