Ignorance of Buyers and Sellers of Seeds. 37 



circumstances conclusions which were once fairly sound 

 for circumstances only partially parallel. In former 

 times no sudden change was required, and therefore the 

 slow processes of improvement which resulted from the 

 example of the most intelligent proprietors and agri- 

 culturists answered fairly well. But when a sudden 

 change of front, owing to the wonderfully rapid increase 

 of foreign competition, was required, the knowledge 

 necessary for at once changing our system did not exist, 

 and there was no machinery ready in the shape of 

 agricultural schools and experimental farms for pro- 

 viding it ; and the result is that while Normandy 

 farmers, as we have seen, have at onde been able to 

 reorganize their farming system, and thrive accordingly, 

 we have changed but little ; and when we have changed 

 in the direction of laying down land to grass, this has 

 often been so badly done, and with so little discrimi- 

 nation, that a vast amount of preventable loss has 

 occurred in all parts of these islands. And this loss has 

 been largely increased owing to the fact that, from the 

 want of prot)er means of instruction being at hand, the 

 seedsmen themselves were as ignorant of the seeds they 

 sold as were the people who bought them ; and henCe an 

 enormous loss was inflicted on the purchasers of seeds, 

 as we shall see in a future chapter. The so-called 

 seedsmen were really not seedsmen at all, but merely 

 shopkeepers who sold seeds, of which they either had 

 no knowledge, or none worthy of the name. They 

 ordered seeds from the large seed importers, who took, 

 with little or no enquiry, seeds sent them from abroad, 

 and passed them on, with all their weed seeds in 

 addition. 



In this connection I may observe that had such 

 schools and farms existed an immense advantage would 

 have been gained from the instruction they would have 

 afforded, not only as regards fruit and vegetable growing, 

 but also — and this is of even more importance still — as 

 regards the means, now so largely employed abroad, 



