29 



As a rule, cabbages for marketing should bo trimmed 

 into as compact a form as possible ; the heads should bo 

 cut off close to the stump, leaving two or three spare 

 leaves to protect them. They may be brought out of 

 the piece in bushel baskets, and be piled on the wagon 

 as high as a hay stack, being kept in place by a stout 

 canvas sheet tied closely down. In the markets of Bos- 

 ton, in the fall of the year they are usually sold at a 

 price agreed upon by the hundred head ; this will vary 

 not only wiih the size and quality of the cabbage, but 

 with the season, the crop, and the quality in market on 

 that particular day. Within a few years I have known 

 the range of price for the Stone Mason or Fottlcr cab- 

 bage equal in size and quality, to be from $3 to $17 per 

 hundred ; for the Marblchead Mammoth from $3 to $25 

 per hundred. Cabbages brought to market in the 

 Spring arc usually sold by weight or by the barrel, at 

 from $1 to $-1 per hundred pounds. 



The earliest cabbages carried to market sometimes 

 bring extraordinary prices ; and this has created a keen 

 competition among market gardeners, each striving to 

 produce the earliest, a difference of a week in market- 

 ing oftentimes making a difference of one-half in the 

 profits of the crop. Capt. Wyman, who controlled the 

 Early Wyman cabbage for several years, sold some 

 seasons thirty thousand heads, if my memory serves 

 me, at pretty much his own price. As a rule, it is the 

 very early and the very late cabbages that sell most 

 profitably. Should the market for very late cabbages 

 prove a poor one, the farmer is not compelled to sell 

 them, no matter at what sacrifice, as would be the case 

 a month earlier ; he can pit them, and so keep them 

 over to the early Spring market which is almost always 

 a profitable one. In marketing in Spring it should be 



