Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

FIVE MILES OE PEA TRIALS (CARTER’S). WORK ON A SEED FARM. GROWING PLANTS FOR SEEDS. THE seeds are sown, and the harvest of flowers is reaped. Here, in a few words, is the life-history of many thousands of plants as far as the general cultivator is concerned. It is nothing to him from where and when the seeds which bring forth his cherished plants have come. He looks to his seed merchant or his nurseryman to supply him with good seeds for the good CUTTING CABBAGES FOR SEEDING PURPOSES (WEBB’S). money with which he pays. Of the infinite care, the peculiar—one might almost say the intuitive—skill, and the hours of weary labour which must be given before the seeds he buys so cheaply can be garnered he knows little or nothing. And yet the growth of plants for the production of seed alone in our glass-houses, our gardens, and our fields is one of the important industries of our tight little island. Its value is represented by hundreds of thousands of pounds ; it gives remunerative employment to thousands of men ; while the perfect products—the plants from the seeds—bring benefit and pleasure to millions of people of all classes and of all creeds. All the seeds distributed even by such wholesale houses as Hurst and Son, Cooper, Taber and Company, Limited, Watkins and Simpson, Wrench, and such retail firms as Messrs. Sutton, Carter, Veitch, Webb, and others, though they have vast areas of land, are not actually grown by them. As such a course would be impossible, they have certain seed growers who cultivate exclusively for them, and to whom “ stock ” seeds are supplied. These represent the finest possible selections that can be saved. Supposing a man be growing tomatoes for Messrs. Carter from stock seed, he advises the firm when the plants are in full crop, and a skilled represen- tative visits the farm. He is a man of ripe knowledge, and every plant is submitted to a