110 TOMATO CULTURE 



plants of a certain character were better suited to some 

 set of conditions and requirements than any sort with 

 which he was acquainted, and having secured seed 

 which he thought would produce plants of that char- 

 acter, has offered it as of a distinct sort. 



It is probable that a better acquaintance with sorts 

 already in cultivation would have prevented the naming 

 of many of these stocks as distinct varieties. What is 

 of far more practical importance, the same name does 

 not always stand for precisely the same type with dif- 

 ferent see4smen, or even with the same seedsmen in 

 different years ; nor are the seedsmen's published de- 

 scriptions such as would enable any one to learn from 

 them just what type he will receive under any par- 

 ticular name, or which sort he should buy in order to 

 get plants of any desired type. Seedsmen's catalogs 

 are published and distributed gratuitously at great 

 expense, and are issued, primarily, for the sake of 

 selling the seeds they offer. They answer the purpose 

 for which they are designed, in proportion as they 

 secure orders for seeds. Will this be measured by 

 the accuracy and completeness of their descriptions? 

 I think that it needs but slight acquaintance with the 

 actual results of advertising to answer in the negative, 

 and whatever your answer may be, the answer given 

 by the catalogs themselves is an emphatic no. 



In a recent case I looked very carefully through the 

 catalogs of 125 American seedsmen who listed a cer- 

 tain variety which is very markedly deficient in a 

 certain desirable quality, and found that but 37 of 

 the 125 mentioned the quality in connection with the 

 variety at all and of these but 7 admitted the defi- 



