VEGETABLE CULTIVATION DURING QUEEN VICTORIA'S REIGN. 391 



and to these men the whole horticultural fraternity and the 

 community at large are greatly indebted. 



I have now passed in review all the leading vegetables ; and, 

 imperfect as this paper has been, I think it will be admitted that 

 the progress in vegetable cultivation, in its effect on the promo- 

 tion of health and daily comfort among all classes of the com- 

 munity, is worthy to rank with the achievements in lighting, 

 locomotion, and sanitation. 



What the progress in the next fifty or sixty years may be no 

 one can foretell ; but on behalf of the seed trade I can only 

 express the hope that it may be accompanied by a corresponding 

 decline in the demand for older and inferior forms, for the 

 labour and anxiety of keeping the rapidly increasing number of 

 varieties true to name can only be fully appreciated by those 

 acquainted with the details of seed growing. 



Discussion. 



Mr. N. N. Sherwood, V.M.H., said that, having himself 

 been in the wholesale seed trade for forty years, he had taken 

 great interest in hearing the paper, and he bore testimony to the 

 able way in which Mr. Sutton had dealt with the subject. It 

 might perhaps be asking Mr. Sutton to disclose trade secrets, 

 but it would have been highly interesting to have known the 

 difference in the amount of trade done by Mr. Sutton's firm now 

 and sixty years ago. Speaking from his own experience, Mr. 

 Sherwood said he was absolutely astounded at the enormous 

 demand for seeds which had sprung up during the last sixty 

 years, and it proved that people not only wanted good vegetables 

 but plenty of them as well. 



Mr. George Bunyard, V.M.H., said he had been forty-two 

 years in the retail seed trade, and what struck him most in Mr. 

 Sutton's paper was the wonderful way in which he had been 

 able to recall the names of old varieties which had long since 

 passed away. With regard to Mr. Sutton's eulogium of 'Ne 

 Plus Ultra ' Pea, Mr. Bunyard thought that in 1 Alfred the 

 Great ' we had all the good qualities of 1 Ne Plus Ultra ' com- 

 bined with a somewhat more vigorous growth and two or three 

 more Peas in each pod. Mr. Bunyard mentioned, as a curious 

 example of reversion, that not at all unfrequently with Runner 

 Beans if white seeds are sown the produce will be of the colour 



