1214 IXTKODUCTIOX 



To all who have so freely contributed of their best, the compiler 

 would record his obligation aud appreciation ; particularly to those 

 personal friends from whom he has exacted and received tribute, 

 chief among whom are Mr. Paul Work and Mr. A. E. Wilkinson. 

 of Cornell University, without whose advice and assistance this 

 bulletin could not have been issued. 



Those interested in the subject are made up of all sorts and 

 conditions of men, including not only the child with the strip of 

 ground so dear to his heart, which has first brought him in touch 

 with Nature's wonderful mysteries of the development of the 

 seed into the living plant, and which has engendered a love for the 

 soil never forgotten; the urban dweller with his circumscribed 

 garden plot, whose hours of sunshine are as few as those in the 

 canyons of the mountains, and the farmer with his more ample 

 space — sometimes, alas, like "the held of the slothful and the 

 vineyard of the man void of understanding," yet when properly 

 managed a most potent factor in his farm economy — but also the 

 one who specializes in vegetable growing on a large scale. To all 

 of these whom this volume reaches with the springtime goes the 

 wish on the part of the compiler, that it may be not only pro- 

 ductive of seed sowing, but also assist in a more abundant harvest. 



