Im-portance, of Good Seed. 399 
the largest branches and fullest unqbels only should be saved. For 
early use, the short cucumber, growing near the root, should be 
saved for seed. In the latter variety for pickling, if one gives 
early indications of unusual straightness, length, and thrift, a 
stake is put by it, and it becomes forbidden fruit. 
A gentleman of my acquaintance, a merchant in the country, 
once mentioned to me a circumstance in point. Having just re- 
ceived a box of seeds from a family, celebrated the world over for 
their garden seeds, he asked the individual who brought them to 
furnish him, as a personal favor, some cucumber seeds lor his own 
garden. He was reminded that the box just opened contained an 
abundance of the article. The merchant replied, " Friend, I want 
a few of those seeds you have saved for your own garden." A 
few days after a little package of seeds was received, which the 
merchant assured me was of more worth, five times, the nominal 
value of ordinary seeds; each seed produced a vigorous, broad- 
leaved plant, leaving nothing to be desired, either in the rapidity 
of its growth, or in the quantity or quality of its productions. 
In crops cultivated diying their growth, all feeble stalks should 
usually be removed, at least when the numbers of vigorous ones 
will admit of that disposition. When pumpkins are cultivated 
with corn, from one-third to two-thirds of the vines may be pulled 
up at the last hoeing, or soon after, and consigned to the hog pen 
with decided advantage. They will show by that time, that a 
green pumpkin, too small for a foot-ball, is all that is to be ex- 
pected from them. But although the subject is so important in 
regard to the seeds which have been mentioned, I know not why 
it is not equally so in reference to the kinds of grain, etc., which 
in this country are almost universally sown broad cast, and yet so 
far as I know, but little has been written or said on that part of 
the subject. I have even heard farmers object to sowin"- wheat ■ 
with a large, full berry, because it would take more in measure, 
for the same quantity of ground, than of a sample of the small 
berried, s}iriveled kind. They said that shrunk wheat would 
" come up," and if the berry was shrivelled to half the full size, 
half the expense of seed would be saved. If there are but few 
who would attempt to speculate by exchanging full, well fed seed 
for a poor, half-starved specimen, then am I fearful multitudes 
who would not take the trouble of exchanging the poor for that 
which was better, paying a little difference. But in the best 
specimens there will be many small, imperfect grains. The cause 
mentioned in the early part of this article will account for some 
of them. In oats, every individual stalk will produce grain, dif- 
fering widely in their size and weight. Some of the branchlets 
of the panicle will put out later, and produce inferior kernels. 
The same is emphatically true with buckwheat. The small 
