GOOD SEED TO BEGIN WITH. 313 



There are pure breeds or improved breeds of vegetables, and 

 specimens of siicli vegetables are as miicli superior to the 

 miserable, mongrel stuff often grown, as a fine-blooded animal 

 is to the meanest scrub to be found in Brighton market, and a 

 person having a pure stock of any variety of vegetables, wliich 

 he desires to perpetuate to improve and make still better, will 

 be obliged to use the same nice care, skill and judgment, in the 

 selection of stock to breed from, as that given by the best 

 breeder of Shorthorns to keep his herd in perfection. Why is 

 it that in our best markets you will always find some men 

 famous for some particular variety of vegetables, while others 

 will have inferior ones ? Is it the cultivation, nature of their soil, 

 and amount of manure applied that make all the difference in 

 the beauty, smoothness and market value of their crop ? 



While admitting the great importance of soil, manure and 

 cultivation in producing good crops, which we advocate as 

 earnestly as any others, we are compelled to say that the men 

 who grow the handsomest and best vegetables are the ones wlio 

 use the best seed, and they cannot be grown in perfection 

 without it. 



And we can lay this down as a rule, that to grow good vege-. 

 tables it is necessary to have pure and good seed. 



Can good seed be readily procured ? We think that it is a 

 difficult matter to purchase just such an article of seed as our 

 best gardeners use ; but it is a difficulty which can in time 

 perhaps be overcome. 



Now, while we have no doubt that a majority of the seedsmen 

 intend to be honest, and to do right, we think many of them do 

 not look sharp enough after the growers of the seed they sell 

 to their customers. If they did, we have no doubt that they 

 would find some of them growing seed from poor, worthless, 

 mongrel stock, totally unfit for market purposes. This they sell 

 to their customers for good seed. . 



Let us illustrate this. A grower of seed plants the roots of 

 two varieties of beets, the turnip blood, and the white Silesian 

 or sugar beet, in the spring, for the purpose of raising seed, 

 and in close proximity to each other. The result of this near 

 planting is a cross breeding of the seed, and roots raised from 

 this cross-bred seed will be neither turnip blood nor sugar beet. 

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