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PETER HENDERSON AGO., NEW YORK- 



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The Garden Beautiful and The Garden Bountiful. g> 



GARDEN has been the hereditary birthright 

 of man since Adam in Eden. The mists of 

 ages obscure the origin of cultivated gardens 

 but they have always been associated with 

 people of civilization and refinement. The 

 transformations during these centuries bring 

 us to a golden era in which the luxury of 

 gardens is enjoyed by more people than 

 ever before. City toilers, tens of thousands 

 of them, in whom the love of nature has not 

 been wholly stifled, are now enabled, through the aid of rapid 

 transit, to live in suburban and country towns and to indulge in 

 man's inherited passion for a plot of soil to till, plan and control, 

 where home surroundings contribute to the health, physique, 

 comfort and pleasure of the entire family, the joy of all being es- 

 pecially centered in the garden — your garden and little kingdom! 

 Here Mother Nature moulds herself to your ideals and training, 

 yielding your chosen flowers, fruits and vegetables. You then 

 live, and "on the fat of the land," not only in summer but also 

 in winter, for many garden products may be stored up for future 

 use, as squirrels store nuts, and bees store honey. The fruits 

 and vegetables of summer being even more enjoyable in winter 

 when gathered and preserved from one's own garden. What a 

 comfortable feeling to have a liberal reserve of such good 

 things, in gratifying variety between seasons, nutritious, whole- 

 some and of known purity. In cellar, pit and barn may be 

 stored apples, beets, cabbage, carrots, celery, onions, parsnips, 

 potatoes, pumpkins, salsify, squash, turnips, _ etc., all keeping 

 in their natural state as plump and fresh as if just out of the 

 garden, and in addition to the above, with domestic co-opera- 

 tion for the canning, preserving, pickling and evaporating, 

 which under the newer methods with improved jars, etc., is now 

 so simple and successful, a great variety of the more tender and 

 delicious fruits and vegetables may be enjoyed ' ' between seasons, " 

 as asparagus, string and wax beans, limas, sweet corn, cucum- 

 bers, mushrooms, green peas, spinach, tomatoes and a host of 

 other good things. 



But the voice of the croaker is heard : "Just as cheap and 

 much less trouble to buy these things in stores." Yes, if one is 



satisfied with the adulterated, poisoned mysteries sold in stores, 

 they are "less trouble," but home quality and home purity are 

 not often found in commercial canned goods. Home quality 

 includes not only superior varieties or kinds of vegetables and 

 fruit put up, but at the right stage of maturity. Home quality 

 canned peas will be the deliriously rich wrinkled marrow peas 

 canned when young and tender; commercial brands are usually 

 round, hard-shell field peas (they yield more), allowed almost 

 to ripen, then " soaked " to bulk up, sweetened with coal tar 

 saccharine and dyed green with poisonous copperas, they are then 

 "salable." Home quality canned corn will be real sweet corn, 

 gathered when a pressure of the thumb nail shows the kernels 

 full of "milk," then "put up " sweet, tender and luscious. 



Home quality canned tomatoes and catsups will be put up 

 in glass, with "just ripe" tomatoes, the solid, sweet, meaty 

 fellows that need no thickening. Commercial canned tomatoes, 

 put up in dangerous tin, are too often half ripe and rotten ripe, 

 adulterated one-half or more with pumpkin, dyed red with coal 

 tar aniline or cochineal (dried insects), preserved with some 

 injurious "preservative " and sweetened with saccharine; such 

 stuff, beautifully labeled, is salable. And so we could continue 

 to draw comparisons through the long list of fruits and vegetables 

 preserved for future use. 



We do not know all of the "tricks of the trade," but enough 

 to agree to Mrs. Rorer's statement in her valuable little book 

 "Canning and Preserving" — "In this age of adulteration, we 

 know not what we eat, and as canning is such a simple operation, 

 it is unfortunate that so many people use food put up in factories." 

 We presume Mrs. Rorer refers only to factories whose food pro- 

 ducts are adulterated, for we cannot think that all commercial 

 canned goods are adulterated; at least some canners send out 

 pure goods, and others honestly believe that the "food pre- 

 servatives" so extensively used are what the compounders 

 claim: tasteless, non-poisonous, innocent productions. Are- 

 cent examination, however, by the Chemistry Division of the 

 "U. S. Department of Agriculture shows that fifty-five of the 

 sixty-seven samples analyzed contained poisonous or injurious 

 chemicals. The report sums up by saying, "dependence cannot 

 be placed on the claims of dealers in food preservatives." 



