142 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



grown potatoes, overgrown squashes, to Hubbard squashes that 

 were but little more than half matured, the color being of a 

 deeper green when in that stage — one year awarding premiums 

 to the largest, coarsest onions, the next to the ripest. I fully 

 believe that our society would promote the best interests of the 

 community, and add much to the educating value of its exhi- 

 bitions, if it would define in general terms what a premium 

 onion, potato, squash or other vegetable must be. 



There can be no good vegetables without good seed ; and the 

 more hands seed passes through before reaching the end of its 

 journey — the seed drill of the farmer, the greater the chances 

 are of its being too old, impure, or wrongly named. I hold, 

 therefore, that the Essex Agricultural Society has done a wise 

 thing in directing its attention of late years to the matter, and 

 offering special premiums for seed grown within the limits of the 

 county. It is very difficult for the farmer who has had the mis- 

 fortune to handle worthless seed, to fix the responsibility on any 

 one ; it has passed through several hands, and " he told me so," 

 is the catch phrase of the entire series ; but let the seed be grown 

 in its own neighborhood and the direct responsibility is a power- 

 ful stimulus to the utmost honesty and highest care on the part 

 of the grower, while it proportionally increases the confidence 

 and profits of the planter. There are three positions taken by 

 prominent societies in New England in respect to the exhibition 

 of vegetable seed : the Massachusetts Horticultural Society not 

 only does not offer any premiums for vegetable seed, but goes 

 farther than this, and positively refuses to have any exhibited on 

 its tables. As several of the prominent men who are active 

 members of that society are seed dealers this action appears 

 anomalous ; but a knowledge of the fact that under the by-laws 

 of that society the exhibitor must have grown his own seed, 

 naturally tones down all surprise. The New England Society 

 offers premiums simply for garden seed, without any condition 

 that it shall have been grown in or out of New England, or that 

 the exhibitor shall have raised a grain of it. The obvious effect 

 of such a course is simply to encourage the production of seed 

 as a commercial article. Our own society in offering premiums 

 for a home grown product, encourages a very important branch 

 of agriculture in our midst, annihilates the vast intervals that 



