CATALOGUE OF FLOWERS, SEEDS, AND FRUITS.

We have received from different directions catalogues of seeds, flowers, and fruits. Instead of a mere mention of them, we shall employ them as texts for some remarks on the departments to which they belong.

The kinds, and varieties of the same kind of vegetables advertised are satisfactory. Then there is evidence that the easily besetting sin of seed establishments has been resisted and very much overcome, viz.: a prodigal multiplication of varieties. Now we do not wish to tie down a seedsman to only one variety of cucumber—one pea—one bean; for there is great advantage in having many varieties of the same vegetable. Some love mild radishes, and some love the full peppery taste; as both qualities cannot exist in the same variety it is desirable to have two. But some radishes which do admirably in the spring and early summer, lose their good qualities if planted in summer. We therefore seek and find a summer variety. This again fails for late

autumnal use, and we procure a (so called) winter sort. We need one pea for its earliness: but early fruit seldom has size or a high flavor; we desire other varieties, therefore, for flavor, even though, in giving them a longer period to perfect their juices, we have a late pea. But some men raise peas for market, and cannot afford to raise a pea merely because fine-flavored, unless also it is prolific. Then, once more, market peas must be raised, usually as a field-pea, and sown broadcast. Some peas stand up stronger than others, and these are of course preferred. Now, as we cannot find any vegetable that combines all the qualities of earliness, size, flavor, and adaptation to variety of soil and diversity of cultivation, we come as near to it as possible, by gaining varieties, in which some one or more of these qualities are better developed than in any others. The reasons for multiplying varieties afford a rule by which they may be limited.

The fact that a seed is a variety different from all others is no good reason for retaining or cultivating it; it must, in SOME respects, surpass others now in use, or it only encumbers the garden. What is the use of ten varieties of peas ripening at the same time of one size, and differing from each other in not one assignable particular? When a catalogue enumerates fifty varieties of cabbage, or pea, or bean, are we to believe that each of the fifty has a virtue peculiar to itself? If not, if two-thirds of them have no merit which is not found, and found in a higher degree, in the one-third they have no business to be retained. Let the one-third, stand and the rest be erased. We regard a very fat catalogue as we do a very fat man—all the worse for its obesity. In comparing catalogues, we are not left as much without an authoritative standard of judgment, in respect to a proper extension of the number of varieties, as might at first appear. English gardening has been carried to such a degree of excellence, both as an art and as a science, that we may regard the deliberate judgment of the best gardeners

as law on this subject. When Loudon published his invaluable “Encyclopedia of Gardening,” he was permitted by the London Horticultural Society to avail himself of the services of the distinguished Monro in the department of culinary vegetables.

Let us compare the catalogues of three first rate seedsmen as it respects a multiplication of varieties, with Mr. Monro’s selections:

CucumberMelonCeleryBeetTurnipCabbagePeasBeansLettuce
Landreth215259107158
Breck910682218202412
Prince 1725893049476156
CucumberMelonCelery
Landreth2152
Breck9106
Prince 17258
BeetTurnipCabbage
Landreth5910
Breck82218
Prince 93049
PeasBeansLettuce
Landreth7158
Breck202412
Prince 476156

Mr. Monro names nineteen kinds of peas only, instead of forty-seven: twenty-two kinds of beans instead of sixty-one; seven varieties of turnip instead of twenty-two, or, worse yet, thirty; fourteen sorts of lettuce, instead of fifty-two.

To the uninitiated a catalogue may look meagre with only eight kinds of lettuce instead of fifty; fifteen beans instead of sixty-one, etc., but these corpulent catalogues make meagre pockets, except in the case of the seedsman. A much greater latitude of varieties is allowable in a nursery catalogue than in a seedsman’s list. But in even these there is a disposition to extravagance which needs to be corrected. Where the disproportion of knowledge between the buyers and seller is so great as it is, and for some time, must be, in horticultural matters, it becomes nurserymen and seedsmen who are honest (and we have many such, and they are increasing)—those who regard their business as an honorable branch of science, as well as a proper means of livelihood, and who hope to gain a high reputation, even

more than they do wealth, it becomes such to render the lists SELECT; and while the monstrously bloated catalogues of boasting and avaricious men continue to perplex and deceive the unwary, let all intelligent cultivators sustain those who rely on the quality rather than quantity of their articles.