tion one hundred and twenty years ago, an extract taken from Landreths' list. At that time, 1786, only two table beets were in general cultivation here in America, supposedly not many more in England, these being Red Turnip and Long Blood; three sorts of lettuce, White Cabbage Head, Brown Dutch, and Curled Silesian; only two sorts of carrot, Long Orange and Early Horn; two sorts of cucumber, Long Pickling and Early Frame; only one sort of spinach; three sorts of onion, Strasburg, Spanish and White; one of watermelon, two of squash; one of tomato; and of peas, Knight's Tall Wrinkled Marrow was the leading sort; all these varieties being now generally superseded by better forms.

The sorts under culture one hundred and twenty years ago, were, however, all considered good of their kind, but most of them under the development of that day would not pass the critical eye of the market gardeners of this age; they would now be considered deficient in size, texture and flavor.

With one exception, the tomato, all the other families named have been in cultivation many hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years, for instance, the cucumber has been cultivated for the table for 3,000 years, but its improvement in the open garden has been slower than that of any other garden vegetable.

The tomato plant, fruit of which was hardly known one hundred years ago, was at first principally known as a garnish, and less than seventy years ago was most carefully avoided by some people under the impression that it bred cancer.

The rise into general use of the tomato has been one of the most marked features in the seed trade, this plant being first catalogued by a Philadelphia seed house in 1820. In 1837 the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society first offered a premium for an exhibition of tomatoes, and the first time a premium was offered by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society was in 1838.

In 1840 there were five or six varieties of tomatoes offered in seedsmen's catalogues, these being the Large Red, the Large Yellow, the Red Pear, the Yellow Pear, the Cherry and the Grape. In 1849 there was introduced a curly-leaf sort, which was named the Extra Early, and following that in 1852, was introduced the Fiji Island, the first of the purple sorts. How the public has changed! No garden vegetable is so much used as the tomato, and it is in such demand that thirty millions of cans put up annually are not sufficient to meet it.

Previous to 1845 the list of desirable sorts of table vegetables had extended very little over those cultivated continuously for fifty

years.

Sugar corn has been only known a comparatively short time, or since 1841. It was in 1839 that the Adams Early or Early York was introduced as a decided improvement for table use over the field corns previously used, these being the Early Canada, White Flint, Cooper's Prolific, Horse Tooth and Tuscarora. It was two years later, in 1841, that the Eight Rowed Sugar Corn was first catalogued, followed by the Asylum and Darling. It was not till 1850 that the Stowell's Evergreen was catalogued, then a shorter grain than the present form, but there are writings extant to the effect that the Indian tribes of the Susquehanna valley had in their possession a sweet corn differing from the flour corns used for meal.

The general list of seeds in use at this period, 1850, comprised such sorts as the Watermelon, Mountain Sprout and Mountain Sweet; Cantaloupe, Turk's Cap and Jenny Lind; Cabbage, Late Flat Dutch, Oxheart, Sugar Loaf, Red Dutch, and Drumhead Savoy; Beans, Mohawk Yellow Six Weeks, Red Valentines; Peas, Extra Early, Charlton, Hotspur, Prussian Blue, Bishop's Long Pod, Knight's Marrow, Blue Imperial; Spinach, Prickly Seeded and Savoy Leaved; and Tomatoes, Large Red and Yellow Pear Shaped; of Potatoes, Fox's Seedlings, Foxites, and Mercers.

PAST AND PRESENT CAPABILITIES.

The early settlers and their descendants, farmers, orchardists, and gardeners, knew next to nothing of anything scientific in the treatment of interests of soils, trees, and small plants. They just went along taking things as chance should determine, and note now what a change! Scientific methods on every hand; the operations not necessarily by a scientific man, but using scientific processes and mixtures, he working under formulas made so plain that the most ordinary mind can make and apply them.

The seed merchant of this day must not only be familiar with the variations and characteristics of the plants which he sells and also what the seeds of others may produce, but he must be quite scientific as a student of all sorts of things relative to agriculture and horticulture, for he is asked for all sorts of advice and if he cannot give such in a practical manner he is not up-to-date; he must be a bug doctor, a soil doctor, a vegetable physiologist, and it looks as if he must be in time an electrician.

It was only as far back as 1845 that the first agricultural school was established in the United States, prior to which date there was little opportunity to acquire any scientific information as to agriculture and horticulture. There were few colleges where anything connected with agriculture was taught, and there were few newspapers having agricultural columns, and such as there were were conducted by men who were to a great extent groping in the dark.

Really it is within very recent years, recent in the history of agriculture, certainly not over fifty or sixty years, during which an inquirer into the whys and wherefores could obtain any accurate information as to the role of fertilizers or as to the phenomena of seed germination, plant vegetation, and subsequent growth; but now all this is changed. No doubt, some theories will have yet to be supplanted, but the practice of agriculture and horticulture is already scientific, an art now affording ample room for the employment of the most progressive chemists, naturalists, vegetable physiologists, mechanicians and philosophers. Of all practical operators in the field or garden, the seed grower should be the most advanced, as he meets with a more varied experience.

MAN POWER DIMINISHING.

While developments in mechanics and science have made easier the tillage of the soil. the growing of crops, and the harvesting, the efficiency of man power, as we get it, has diminished; that is to say, farm employees and some of the superintendents, too, make far less effort in the interests of their employers than was formerly the case.

Most of them are like birds of passage, here to-day and gone to-morrow, or at most they are with us one year and gone the next, always seeking new pastures, neglectful of their employer's property, thoughtless of everything under their hands and their observation. Indeed, few farm hands nowadays know how to plow; few even know how to properly take care of a pair of horses; most of them knowing nothing except to do everything in the wrong way.

While some individual must put on record reminiscences of the past as I do here, it don't do to dwell too much on back numbers, as every one must be up to the methods of the day, all of us must keep up with the band wagon or belong to a fossil age.

WHAT SCIENCE HAS DEVELOPED.

Seed growing has had its new birth as well as other operations in the arts and sciences, a new birth noticeable to every one in improved implements and tools, all great labor-savers, but best illustrated by noting the development along scientific lines, as for example:

1. The use by seedsmen of carbon-bisulphid and hydrocyanic acid gas in killing the weevil in seeds; also in killing under surface insects and grubs.

2. In spraying garden plants to stop on the one hand insect ravages, and, on the other hand, to stop the extension of fungous dis

eases.

3. The use of electric light as introduced in France to force a nighttime growth of vegetables cultivated in forcing houses, a growth equal to ten per cent. additional development and precocity.

4. The practice of nitroculture in connection with plants of the leguminosa family, an inoculation with commercially-made cultures of nitrogen-fixing-bacteria, much advancing the immediate development of peas and beans and laying up a store of stimulating food for succeeding crops.

5. The artificial passage of electric currents by some German experimenters through the length and breadth of plant beds in vegetable forcing houses for the purpose of stimulating increased cellular action, equal, it is said, to ten per cent. development.

6. The use of chloroform to produce an intense rest which makes it quite possible subsequently by the application of moisture and heat to gain sixty days advancement in the blooming of flowering and fruit plants.

7. The use of electric air currents to stimulate the growth of garden and field crops, a gain of twenty to sixty per cent..

8.

The electrocution of insects feeding upon vines and plants both on their above and underground surfaces, particularly applicable in the cases of grapes, roses and fruit trees.

9. And among the latest scientific developments in connection with agriculture is the extraction and holding by mechanical and chemical means of atmospheric nitrogen, and its subsequent incorporations with other things in the making of a commercial fertilizer, the air offering a limitless mine out of which to collect the most important of all plant stimulants.

This generalization indicates that the higher practice of agriculture and horticulture, of which the seed grower is the first exponent, has already become one of the sciences.

NO MILLIONAIRE SEEDSMEN.

No American seedsman has made a big fortune out of the business though many a comfortable income. Those seedsmen who have done still better have been fortunate in some outside speculations, or fortunate in the rise of country or city real estate. That there have not been in the past, nor are not now, any seedsmen multimillionaires who have amassed their fortunes directly from the sale of seed is significant of the limitations of the business as to its scope and profits, a business so overdone with respect to the demand as to result in a most serious cutting up of the trade and lowering of prices, so that as a wholesale business it compares unfavorably with many other commercial businesses, which we all know do develop many multi-millionaires; as for example, merchants and manufacturers of dry goods or other textiles, manufacturers of iron, miners of coal, manufacturers of agricultural implements, dealers in tobacco, sugar, flour and a thousand other pursuits.

Five thousand men in the United States actually own over onesixteenth of the entire national wealth of one hundred billions, and control considerably more. None of these is a seedsman. In fact, these five thousand men own and influence one-half of the entire national wealth; and as I said before, none of them is a seedsman; or can it be possible, the modesty of seedsmen prevents them taking an active part in the world's affairs?

President Grenell: We will now listen to a paper by Mr. Floyd Brallier, which in the absence of Mr. Brallier will be read by the courtesy of Mr. P. H. Gage.

Mr. Gage: If the author were present and could read his paper he would probably be able to present it more forcibly than myself. I regret his absence, and if any of you should not think it as excellent a paper as I myself do, I hope you will ascribe it to the fact that the reader was not able to present it to you as well as would the author if he were here.

THE SEED CATALOG FROM THE CUSTOMER'S

STANDPOINT.

From babyhood I have been interested in seed catalogs. Should I produce the old picture book of my childhood days some here would doubtless recognize the colored prints taken from their seed books twenty-five years ago. As soon as I learned to read, I read seed catalogs; and my first order for seed penned by myself and representing almost the sum total of my savings for six months, was sent to Mr. Childs when I was scarce out of the first reader. what do you suppose the order included? Well, seed catalogs were not so well calculated to inform the ignorant as now; so it contained Lily seed, Calochortus seed, Japanese iris and Phlox Drummondi and one or two other varieties. I do not have a duplicate (I did not keep them then), but if my memory serves me aright it amounted to 49c.

And

I spaded my own garden and had it in prime condition, planted such seeds as I had, pinks, sweet williams, tree cypress, and a variety of hardy carnations that bloomed in some two or three months after sowing. (I have never been able to find it since I was ten years old); and when my seeds came they had the place of honor, especially the lilies. And such childish visions of beauty as I had when planting those lily seed. But that was all I ever saw of them. They have not germinated yet, and the calochortus, I saw my first blossoms long after in a green house, and I have never tried Japanese iris since. But the phlox made up for them all.

You are wondering why this story. It is told simply because it brings me to the first great improvement I would suggest for the retail catalog. A need I will admit, not so great as it once was, yet nevertheless a great need-that of explicit information along the line of what a novice may, and what he may not reasonably expect to give him returns. The great mass of our people are ignorant, especially on flowers and their culture. Many try them but once or twice, through friends perhaps, and then lose interest because "they cannot make flowers grow." I claim that culture directions should be given for the various flowers and plants, even though it be necessary to charge for the catalog.

Not long ago I asked a friend who has grown vegetables for market for years, what he considered the greatest "lack" in the seed catalog of to-day. He answered without hesitation that to his mind they should contain more complete culture directions, and added that he would willingly pay 25c for a copy of a catalog that contained the desired information.

This need not lumber up a catalog unduly, either. Flowers could be divided into a dozen or less classes whose culture would be very similar. These directions could be given with reasonable fullness. Vegetables could be treated in the same way. No more than eight or ten pages need be devoted to this and I am sure it would be a profitable investment at least to the larger firms.

The next point I wish to mention is true descriptions. Take twenty-five catalogs, and read the descriptions of even a vegetable that has been standard for twenty years, and they will vary as much as they will on entirely different varieties. Some of the novelties are lauded to the skies by some catalogs, while others will come out flatly and say they are inferior For a concrete example I will mention the tree straw-berry, and the scarlet ground cherry. Such things mean either that some one is dishonest, some one has not sufficiently informed himself before writing, or there is a very great difference of opinion.

I feel sure that the seedmen who will see to it that they have true descriptions of their various wares, descriptions that are not only true, but that describe, and stick to the plain truth will win in the end.

This will mean perhaps, that novelties will be much more scarce, and that those that are offered may net their venders less immediate returns. but this will be no loss to the seed trade at large, and I am sure it will be a great saving to the customer.

I favor the production and introduction of good novelties, but I hope the day will soon come when wild cat novelties such as oats with heads a foot and a half long, yard long corn. which are only brought out with an intent to deceive, be at an end.