The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-07-30

U early varieties of which have been grown near Seville or on the plains of Italy. Quantities of peas of all varie- ties are collected on another floor, hun dreds of tons of the seeds of this fa- vorite vegetable passing through the building in one season. Hundreds of bushels of these have come the three months journey by sailing vessels from New Zealand; others have been brought from Canada; others again have been harvested in the fertile plains of Germany. near the Hartz Mountains.
 ..-lsewhere are stored immense quantities of the scarlet runner bean |. How littlo the amateur gardener. when he invests three pence in half pint for his garden, knows about his pur- chase, or realizes how far these beans may have come. There flashes through his mind no picture of the districts in far away Galicia, behind the Carpa- thians. where they have been harvest ed.
 The work of farming and harvest ing these beans is done mainly by peasants. quaintty dressed in their na- tive garb of sheepskins. who cultivate small portions of ground. After these men flock to the local markets. each with the produce of his small plot of land. which he disposes of to the buy CTS. The buyers. chiefly Jews, make a good profit as middlemen between the peasant cultivators and the Brit ish wholesale merchant. and hundreds of bushels of beans are thus sent by way of Dantzic and Hamburg to Lon- don. In a lofty granary are piled quantities of radish seed, of which some growers plant as many as twen- ty bushels. How insignificant seems the ordinary ounce one buys when compared with this. Close by are stored tons and tons of the seed from which our favorite spring onion Is raised. and which claims Southern France as its home.
 'It Is wonderful to note tho care necessary for the production of those velvety lawns for which the British Isles are so famous. The answer gtv- en by the old gardener at one of the Oxford Colleges to the American who asked him for his lawn recipe does not quite suffice.
 ".'You cuts un and rolls un and cuts un and rolls un,' repled the old man.
 "Is that all that Is required? asked the stranger.
 "'Ye-es, jest cuts un and rolls un for 200 years or more and you gets your lawn all right
 Something more Is required than even this, however. The seed has been collected from many countries. Ger many, Holland, Canada, New Zealand. Ireland and the County of Kent all contribute their share toward 1t. The different samples thus obtained are thoroughly cleaned and screened so that no foreign weed may remain. The natural grasses are then mixed with just as great care as the tea merchant devotes to the blending of his teas or the chemist to the making up of an important and intricate medicine; in- deed, the sheet descriptive of the in gradients resembles nothing more than a doctors prescription. The quantities of each variety are all accurately spec filed, and the names written in Latin OLatin. be 1t said, peculiar to the seeds man and scarcely admissible in classic circles.)
 Another interesting department Is that of the pea -pickers. About 100 wo- men are employed for the work. They are seated in rows at desk shaped benches, and bright and happy they look working away as their tongues keep tune to their hands. Rapidly they pick out the bad peas and allow the good to fall through hole in the desk into a bag beneath. This bad seed. when carefully separated. Is used for feeding purposes. In an ordinary way these women pick from five to six bushels a day but should the peas be weathered. as in the last season, 1t might take two days to pick a single bushel.
 'Wonderful to tell. the seedman has also his incubator. In a room at the top of one of the buildings are found hundreds of small pots containing growing seeds. These are the tests to ascertain whether or not the seeds will really grow, and in this way every lot of seed which comes into the ware house is at once sampled-that is, fif- ty or 100 seeds are counted out and placed in the testing chamber. The results of these growths are recorded in a book, and later transferred by the testing man into the large locked ledgers which have been already mem toned; thus percentages of the growths ak obtained.
 ITO prove the correctness of these results a duplicate sample of seeds Is put into an incubator. much after the fashion adopted by the scientist to propagate his bacilli. The seeds are wrapped in plotting paper. then put on thick sheets of the same and placed on zinc trays: they are then thoroughly dampened and left in a hot chamber to germinate. which takes about two days The necessity of the portly pedigree books becomes at once apparent. because no matter what information is required they can give it all At a glance one can see what quantity of stock exists. where grown and from what percentage.
 The busiest time in one of these ware housese Is naturally from No yember until February. when enor- nous quantities of seeds and bulbs pass through the buildings, and any one who is then lucky enough to ob- tain permission to visit one of these closely guarded Repositories, teeming with interest will scarcely regret the hour thus spent"
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