70 MARKET GARDENING. 



and improved through cultivation and selection, cover- 

 ing longer or shorter periods of time. The same work 

 of selection and improvement of good qualities in vege- 

 tables is yet going on, and more earnestly than ever 

 before. The seed grower of to-day is doing the work, 

 the only fear is he is going too fast, introducing many 

 variations of little merit, rather than devoting himself 

 to the selection and preparation of varieties of suitable 

 quality. 



Selection of Varieties. Were it not for hered- 

 ity the seed growers' labors would be in vain, but, fortu- 

 nately, the man who finds a good thing in the green- 

 house, flower garden, vegetable garden, or in the field, 

 can seize upon it, and, by the aid of heredity, fix, after 

 a time, its valuable qualities for the benefit of all. But 

 it may be well to say he meets with many instances of 

 curious reversion to original types. 



Change of Seed. It is quite possible to grow the 

 same crop on the same land for successive years, but it 

 is a ruinous policy. We own a plantation in Virginia, 

 upon a field of which, it is said, corn was grown succes- 

 sively and uninterruptedly for ninety years, but the pro- 

 duct had fallen to ten bushels per acre. The avoid- 

 ance of such a course of seeding is known as the system 

 of rotation of crops, that is, such an alternation of seeding 

 as to complete define a cycle of cropping in a term of 

 years. Now, no less important is a rotation in the seed 

 itself. The vegetable gardener generally purchases his 

 seeds from various sources, but the grain farmer some- 

 times blindly adheres to his own stock of wheat, rye, 

 oats, till it has lost its original character, and run down 

 in productiveness for want of healthy stamina. 



Much is gained, then, by a change of seed of any 

 family of plants, by seed grown on a different soil ; and 

 we urge our readers to make trial every year of a limited 

 quantity, be it only a few papers, or pounds, of old or 



