to?" as for a
wise physician to answer the question, "What is the best medicine?"

=Varietal names= and descriptions mean something quite different in the
case of plants like the tomato, which are propagated by seed, from what
they do with plants like the apple and strawberry, which are propagated
by division. In the latter case all the plants of the variety are but
parts of the primal origination, and so are alike. A description is
simply a more or less complete and accurate definition of what a
certain immutable thing really is, but in the case of plants propagated
by seed the variety is made up of all the plants which accord with a
certain ideal. Bailey says, "Of all those which have more points of
resemblance than of difference," and a description of the variety is of
that ideal which in common practice is not fixed, but may and generally
does vary not only with different people but from time to time. The only
foundation for varietal names in plants of this class is an agreement as
to the ideal the name shall stand for. Under modern horticultural
practice when anyone has been able to secure seed most of which he is
reasonably sure will develop into plants of a distinct type different
from that of any sort known to him, he has a distinct variety, so that
it is not surprising that we should find that American seedsmen offer
tomato seed under more than 300 different names, and those of Europe
under more than 200 additional, so that we have more than 500 varietal
names, each claiming to stand for a distinct sort. Now it is quite
possible--indeed, it is certain--that we might have 500 tomato plants
each different in some respect, either of vine, leaf, habit of growth,
or character of fruit, from any of the others and that these differences
might make plants of one type better suited to certain conditions and
uses than any other; but it is very certain that these 500 names do not
stand for such differences. It is doubtless true that a portion--though
I think but a small portion--of these different sorts exist simply as a
matter of commercial expediency; but by far a greater part of them exist
because one has found that plants of a certain character were better
suited to some set of conditions and requirements than any sort with
which he was acquainted, and having secured seed which he thought would
produce plants of that character, has offered it as of a distinct sort.

It is probable that a better acquaintance with sorts