224 GARDENING FOR PLEASUKE. 



them have no responsibility, and they rarely fail to make 

 their wares accord with the wants of the purchaser : 

 nearly every plant is hardy, ever-blooming, and has all 

 the qualities desired by the buyer. 



But now and then these swindles become a serions 

 matter to the victim. Some years ago a typical English- 

 man, who had been a green grocer in Covent Garden 

 Market, London, found his way to New York. He at 

 once discovered an almost entire absence of Cauliflowers 

 in our markets, and what few there were, were sold at 

 prices four times those of London. He soon made up 

 his mind to make his fortune, and, at the same time, 

 show the Yankees something they did not know. He 

 duly selected and prepared the ground for an acre, and 

 one day in May he sallied into the market to procure his 

 Cauliflower plants. This he found no difficulty in doing, 

 for at Dutch Peggy's (in those days the headquarters for 

 all kind of herbs, plants, and seeds) they were to be seen 

 by the wagon load. Ten thousand were procured (the num- 

 ber required for his acre), and, duly planted, they began to 

 grow apace. He had planted the first of May. If it had 

 been in England, his, Cauliflower heads would have been 

 ready about the first of July; but something was evi- 

 dently wrong in the Yankee climate. His Cauliflowers 

 grew through June, through July into August, only to 

 develop into fine specimens of Drumhead Cabbage, then 

 of hardly the value he had paid for them as Cauliflower 

 plants. He got out of the business thoroughly dis- 

 gusted ; and in telling his sorrowful tale to me a year 

 afterward, he related that when he went to expostulate 

 with old Peggy about having blasted his prospects, before 

 he could get a word said, she recognized him as a cus- 

 tomer, and demanded to know if he did not again want 

 some more early Cauliflower plants. 



I have said old Peggy was also a vender of seeds. It 

 is now nearly forty years ago that a young florist pre- 



