162 MY FARM. 



Possibly they may reduce it to subjection ; but their 

 growth will be rank and flavorless, whatever size 

 they may gain. 



It is a common mistake to suppose that garden 

 products are good in proportion to their size. The 

 horticultural societies have done great harm in bol- 

 stering the admiration for mere grossness. Smooth- 

 ness, roundness, perfect development of all the parts, 







and delicacy of flavor, are the true tests. I remem- 

 ber once offering for exhibition a little tray of gar- 

 den products, in which every fruit and vegetable 

 though by no means all they should have been was 

 perfect in outline, well developed, free from 'every 

 Bting of insect or excrescence, and of that delicate 

 and tender fibre which belongs only to swift and 

 unchecked growth ; yet my poor tray was over- 

 slaughed entirely, by an adjoining show of monster 

 vegetables, with warty excrescences, and of rank 

 and wholly abnormal development. The committee 

 would have been properly punished if they had been 

 compelled to eat them. 



In the same way, and with equal fatuity, the 

 societies for agricultural encouragement persist in 

 giving premiums to so called fat cattle ; mere mon- 

 sters not of good, wholesome, muscular fibre, well- 

 mottled but mountains of adipose substance, which 

 no Christian can eat, and which are only disposed of 



