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VEGETABLE GARDENING. 



It is necessary for the most successful dreedinng of plants 

 to have in vieiv a well defined purpose and in selecting seed not 

 to vary the ideal standard of excellence sought, for such varia- 

 tion increases the difficulty of fixing desired characteristics. 



It is found to be quite a general law obtaining among plants 

 that the qualities of the parent are much more potent and thus 

 more liahle to he transmitted than some especially desirable 

 qualities of a few individual fruits, which may occur on a plant 

 otherwise defective. For instance, Liivingstone, who has done 

 much to improve the tomato, selected seed for fifteen years from 

 the best tomatoes that approached most nearly in size and other 

 qualities the best modern tomatoes without noting much im- 

 provement. He says, *'I was then no nearer the goal than 

 when I started. Such stock seed would reproduce every trace 

 of their ancestry, viz: thin fleshed, rough, undesirable fruits." 

 It finally occurred to him to select from the special merits of 

 the plants as a whole instead of from the best fruits without re- 

 gard to the plants on which they grew. Improvement then came 

 easily and rapidly and in a few years he obtained the Paragon, 

 Acme and Perfection, varieties which were vastly superior to 

 and have entirely supplanted the old varieties of tomatoes. 

 Again, in selecting seed corn it is more important to save seed 

 from plants having ears approaching the desired size of cob, ker- 

 nel, etc., rather than to select the largest kernels alone or to 

 select from ears after they have been pulled. 



When it is desired to hasten the ripening period of a variety, 

 only the seed from the earliest maturing specimens from a plant 

 having the largest number of early specimens should be planted. 

 In order to fix late maturing qualities, seed should he saved 

 from the late maturing fruits on plants possessing these feat- 

 ures to the greatest extent. 



The continued selection of any seed from inferior specimens 

 results in the fixing of the poorer qualities even more surely 

 than the selection of seed from the better plants results in im- 

 provement. By judicious selection the cabbage has sometimes 

 been changed from a biennial to an annual producing no head 

 at all but going to seed the first year. When cabbage has been 

 grown for several generations from stem sprouts and not from 



