Eighty Years To Grow 
A Crop of Seed 

It has taken us eighty years to produce the crop of seeds offered you in this book. 
In 1866 Major R. L. Ragland, the founder of this business, began preparing for this crop. 
Since then, three generations of the same family have devoted their lives to perfecting 
what the old Southern Major started. 
Good things don’t just happen. They are the result of many long years of labor. 
The most profitable of the field crops—the best of the vegetables—the most beautiful of 
flowers all have written in their history, long years of painstaking work by some man 
devoted to agriculture. 
For eighty years, we have been searching the world for the better things. Our ex- 
perience in the seed business, our contacts with the seed growers the world over have 
placed us in position to obtain the best. We have found from experience where each 
crop produces its best seed. We have studied and tested thousands of varieties and built 
our stock from the best. 
The values we are offering you in this book, could not be obtained in 1866 at any 
price. There was no such thing then as a stringless snap bean, hybrid corn, or the 
Dahlia flowered zinnia. Each year has seen improvements. Hach generation has made 
its contribution to the knowledge of the next. By this slow but sure process of evolu- 
tion, Slate’s Seeds have been improved for the past eighty years. 
Truly it has taken us eighty years to produce the 1945 crop of seeds offered in this 
book. In 1866 the seed was planted. In 1946 you reap the harvest from your own 
garden. 

SLAVES, SelelO) CLOMMNCYANNID, MC, 
SOUTH BOSTON - VIRGINIA 

January 1, 1946 
MARK 
