VEGETABLES CABBAGE. 163 



carefully we selected the heads that we used for seed, the 

 same difficulty occurred. A few miles inland, some- 

 where near the Orange Mountain, New Jersey, we found 

 that an old German was always ahead of us in having the 

 first Wakefields in New York market, and these, too, of 

 a uniformity in shape that none of us nearer the city 

 could produce. All inducements to get him to sell seed 

 were disregarded, and year after year he kept the lead. 

 Several plans were laid to circumvent him, such as order- 

 ing a hundred of his Cabbages with roots on. But old 

 Carl was not to be caught so. He filled the order to the 

 letter, making the buyer pay roundly for the roots, but 

 took the liberty of first dipping them in boiling water ! 

 But one day he invited a friend and countryman to see 

 his wonderful Cabbages as they grew. This was a fatal 

 day for Carl's monopoly, for his friend had his eyes about 

 him, and observed that several of the stumps from which 

 the earliest heads had been cut, were marked with a 

 stake, as were a few of the choicest shape, as yet uncut. 

 The secret was out. Carl's success had been gained by 

 persistently, year after year, selecting the earliest and 

 finest heads ; taking up the stumps from which they 

 were cut, he planted them carefully, and, removing the 

 young shoots produced from the stumps, he treated them 

 exactly as we treat cuttings of a flower; that is, by plant- 

 ing the slip in the soil, watering it freely, and shading it 

 until it rooted. After these cuttings or shoots of the 

 Cabbage were rooted, they were planted in the usual Cab- 

 bage-frame, covered with glass in winter, set out in 

 spring, like a plant from the seed, and next July ripened 

 seed. This process is too expensive and slow to follow 

 for raising Cabbage seed in quantity, but it is now used 

 by careful growers to produce pure and improved stock 

 from which to raise seed. 



