Seed Saving versus Seed Selection 



There are two types of Seed Growers: 



First: Those irresponsible men who save seeds from crops grown either from stocks of entirely 

 unknown origin or from stocks which cannot be styled of a pedigree grade, and 



Secondly: Those men, students of horticulture or agriculture, working after a definite plan for the 

 improvement of the species, after a system bearing on the past and present pedigree of seeds which 

 they sell. 



The city seedsman who is dependent upon obtaining his suppUes of American seeds from farmer 

 growers must choose between those two classes of producers; and the seedsman who obtains his supplies 

 of European-grown seeds must choose between good and poor stocks offered him, the quality of which is 

 to be to a large extent measured by their cost price. 



Reliable or unrehable grades of seeds must produce good or poor crops just the same as horned cattle, 

 horses or dogs produce good or poor progeny according to the strain of blood in their parents. 



Live-stock men breeding prize-taking animals, recognizing this fact in the animal kingdom, unite 

 desirable qualities as found in selected parents. 



Really the result of selection or neglect is more observable with garden vegetables than in the stable. 

 Continued and intense selection of Garden Vegetables .as "mother plants," even if only continued three 

 or four years, results in physical changes marked to a far greater degree than can be produced in the animal 

 kingdom in twenty years, because with garden vegetables the new generations of each year show rapid 

 changes in character, in all features, the desirable ones being further intensely selected and fixed every 

 succeeding summer, but with horses and cows the changes are necessarily years apart, consequently slow 

 processes in the fixing of qualities. 



The plantman is distinguished from the vegetableman by working to a larger extent in glass houses^ 

 certainly, always with more erect and prominent subjects, he has greater opportunities than the vegetable 

 grower, who most of his time has to deal with objects under the surface of the earth or just above the sur- 

 face of the earth; consequently, both by cross-fertilization, by budding, and by selection, improvements 

 are not so easily made as in the more erect plants which are more easily viewed and studied. 



The plant doctor of late years has by assiduous and persistent work made enchanting changes in 

 form, color and habit, developments which never entered the imagination of horticulturists of other days. 



Notice how selection, cross-breeding and environment have multipUed the number of petals 

 in the rose; how they have increased the scent; how they have imparted to certain varieties an ever- 

 blooming habit and great variety of color; how, with other plants, they have changed the character of 

 tendrils and spines into branches; how land plants have been turned into aquatic plants, and so on might 

 be cited marvelous changes with many ornamental plants and fruits. 



Still, with table vegetables much has been accomphshed, although, the introduction of truly new 

 and valuable types has not kept pace with the introduction of new fruits, largely for the reason that in 

 the latter instance observations can be more intensely made. 



These observations are made with the view of directing the reader, whether he be a merchant, a 

 market gardener, or a cottage gardener, to results of application of mind and hand; still more in the scien- 

 tific improvement of families by painstaking cross-breeding and hybridizing, certainly in the maintaining 

 of the standard of desirable qualities as done through intelligent observation and selection, because under 

 neglect or cultivation on dead soils, those deficient in organic matter, organisms reacting favorably upon 

 each other, plants are certain to so deteriorate in a term of years as to become in many cases valueless 

 mongrels. Yet the constancy to the one main or essential system of defined fructification in each species 

 remains as fixed now as it was before the days of the Medes and Persians. Every radically distinct family, 

 as of Cabbage, Beet or Melon, confining its wide scope of variation within the dimensions of distinct philo- 

 logical lines, even under these hmitations there are broad variations in size and shape, color and flower, 

 and there often occurs to a student of plant life the very regretful thought of how many tens of thousands 

 of accidentally cross-bred or hybridized vegetables, fruits, grains, or flowers of most superlative merit 

 have developed, bloomed, seeded and gone out of existence just because they did not pass under the obser- 

 vation of an intelligent propagator. 



The poet Gray partially recognized this lamentable fact in nature when he wrote: 



" Full many a fldwer is born to blush unseen . ^ 



And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 



Scattered through this list of 250 sorts of garden vegetables will be noticed here and there in Large 

 Type particular sorts which, old or new, are especially recommended as among the best in their respective 

 families. 



For example: On pages 39 and 40, among the various sorts of Table Beets, it will be observed 

 that Crosby's Egyptian, Landreths' Best, and Detroit are printed in distinct type, for the express 

 purpose of showing that these three sorts W3 consider better than some of the others named. 



As we cannot ask our customers to purchase all the 250 sorts of seeds we li«t, we, by the use of the 

 star and large type, point out the most desirable, and ask private gardeners to accept our judgment as to 

 the superlative merit of sorts so designated. A garden planted, in whole or in part, with seeds of the forty 

 varieties in this list printed in Large Type will prove satisfactory in accordance to the number of specially 

 recommended varieties used. 



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