dling his stock seed. It is certainly best for the canner that the seedsman confine his attention to his stocks, since he can thus deliver the best and most even seed. There is a widespread demand by the canner that he be sold seed from rogued fields. This is based on a misconception, for which in all probability both canner and seedsman are to blame. Also the seedsman will very rarely sell any of his stock seed, and it is best for the canner that he should not. If his stock seed has had sufficient care it can only be sold at an advanced price. Keeping in mind the very high ratio of seedsmen's plantings to canners' plantings, 33 per cent, it is easy to see that the seedsman will have use for all the stock seed he can properly rogue.

INDIVIDUAL PLANT SELECTION.

In occasional years of near crop failure the seedsman may be glad if he is able to retain his stock seed. With very short crops roguing

FIG. 3.-A small thrashing outfit being used on small lots of peas resulting from individual selections.

is not possible, and after one or two such years when a good year returns the roguing will be very heavy. The best that can be done by roguing is to attain approximate purity, since some undesirable plants will always escape. It therefore becomes good business to go back to single plants as progenitors of new lines, since money may thus be saved on roguing expense. This is a long process, however, taking from six to eight years from the beginning of a single plant selection to the time when this new stock can be substituted for the old. Small thrashing outfits are used for thrashing these small stocks of peas (fig. 3).

ROGUES OF ALASKA PEAS.

In the case of the Alaska pea there are various stages in divergence from type. All Alaska rogues, however, are larger, later, and often more productive plants than the true variety. Not sufficient evidence is on hand to state whether a plant which has only started on this downward path will produce some progeny which are true Alaska peas, but it does seem certain that the confirmed rogue will not produce the true variety. Some plants of true Alaska are apparently continually producing these variant types, which end by being rogues. Therefore, in order to keep any strain of the Alaska variety true, careful work on stock seed is required. These divergent plants must be detected as soon as possible and removed from the strain. This will require all the closeness of discernment of which the seedsman is capable.

These divergent plants can best be seen as the crop is ripening, when the leaves of the true Alaska plants are turning yellow. The rogues, being stronger and later, will stay green and will then show most plainly. In ordinary seasons there are about 10 days in which this work can be done in any one field.

FARMERS' STOCKS OF ALASKA PEAS.

There is another and a very important point in connection with Alaska peas. The variety being smooth seeded (it is usually slightly pitted) and in many ways very much like field varieties, it makes a good field pea. Farmers in Wisconsin and in parts of the West have kept their own seed, growing it without roguing; in fact, for a field pea the more rogues a stock of Alaska has the better type it will be. These stocks may keep the name Alaska, but may have lost practically all their true Alaska plants. There are to be found stocks of this kind which are so different that it is a question needing further study whether they trace to Alaska or not. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish these spurious Alaska peas from the true variety by the characters of the ripe seed (fig. 4). They are, however, a recognized field pea, often under the name Alaska, in the regions where grown, and, moreover, are distinct from other green-seeded field peas, being earlier than Prussian Blue, Blue Bell, or Scotch Blue, which are the varieties most like them in the dry seed. Being grown as field peas and carelessly thrashed with custom machines, these stocks become mixed with other field types. If these mixtures happen to contain varieties with colored flowers, the peas from these will turn dark on processing when canned and will darken the liquor in the cans. A small-seeded, colored-flowered field variety called Bangalia (see the illustration of its seeds on the cover) has been so mixed, and has caused heavy loss.

These spurious stocks damage the canner and the grower for the cannery in various ways.

FIG. 4.-Genuine and spurious Alaska peas. Growing tests have shown that A produces a good, even strain of the Alaska variety, while B produces a large proportion of late, long, spurious Alaska plants. This shows the practical difficulty in recognizing the strains from seed samples.

DAMAGE DONE BY SPURIOUS ALASKA PEAS.

(1) In regions where the Alaska is the only variety canned, the crop is off the ground in time for a succession crop, sometimes a canner's crop of sweet corn or dwarf Lima beans. Late peas if allowed to mature so as to harvest may defer the succession crop so

long as to prevent its being planted. Even where the late peas may be off in time for planting the succession crop, the spurious seed very seriously discommodes the farmer, as the plants throw his pea-harvest season into the time when all his labor is needed for wheat harvest or corn cultivation.

(2) Being very long, heavy in vine, and late, the spurious Alaska peas do not ripen simultaneously and will rarely give more than a very small crop of usable peas at any one time.

(3) If mixed with purple-flowered varieties, some peas will darken on processing and the liquor will be dark, so that the canned peas will not be salable.

(4) Most important of all is the loss of confidence and good will between the canner and his growers. This is a loss which may take years to repair and can not be estimated.

The losses from these spurious Alaska peas to the trucker or market gardener are only slightly less than to the canner. While he picks by hand and will be able to get the best crop the vines will yield, yet he will lose the early market, for these peas will be from 10 days to two weeks later than the true Alaska variety.

PRECAUTIONS.

As to the precautions which a purchaser may take to avoid the danger of getting this spurious Alaska seed, he can grow all or part of his own seed if he is in a region suited to growing seed peas. It is very doubtful whether it is at all practicable for the canner in the southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio and in Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey to grow his own seed. The seasons are too precarious and the danger from weevils too great. Some of the best Wisconsin canners grow a part of their own seed. They do not rogue, and they renew their stock every two or three years from a seedsman. They get in this way a knowledge of what they are planting by observing the stock seed the first year after its purchase from the seedsman. If it is not satisfactory they may can it rather than save it for seed. These men are not seedsmen and still depend on the seedsman for their stocks. Canners do not wish to become seedsmen.

There have been seed-pea jobbers who have handled Alaska seed without controlling any stock seed of their own. This is at best a very risky business, since it is practically impossible to distinguish the Alaska variety by sample (see fig. 4). The price of seed peas is a comparatively heavy item of expense in growing a crop, in comparison with other canners' vegetables, and it is natural that canners should wish the price to be as low as possible for good service. But it is easy under present conditions to push the bargain for seeds so

far that it becomes a very bad bargain for the canner. Some few seedsmen see in the canner a man who looks only at the price he pays for his seed, disregarding quality. Some few canners see in the seedsman or seed dealer a man intent only on making a sale, regarding the seed only as merchandise, with no care as to quality. There are possibly a few such canners and a few such seedsmen, but the number of each has been greatly overestimated, since both attitudes are very short sighted from a business standpoint.

To a seedsman there are two all-important things: His stock seeds and the reputation based on those stocks. No vegetable crop is conceivable in the growing of which the purchaser must depend more completely on the good faith and reliability of his seedsman than peas. Therefore, in no seed enterprise is a reputation for uniformly good seed and honest dealings a greater asset to a seedsman. No seedsman can afford to buy Alaska peas on sample. Their identification is too uncertain, and he has too much at stake in his reputation. It is safest for the seed-growing seedsman not to purchase seed of the Alaska variety the stock of which he does not control.

The canner buys in sufficiently large quantities to buy direct from the seed-growing seedsman. He should realize more than he does the risk he takes in buying seed of Alaska peas whose history he can not completely trace; also that Alaska seed in the dry state can not be certainly identified. He will be in a much safer position if he buys only from seed growers who control their own stocks.

Unless there is some very decided advantage to the farmer in growing the spurious Alaska peas as a field-pea crop, their culture should be strongly discouraged, their place being taken by some other green-seeded field pea. As already pointed out, all field peas are objectionable to the seedsman in his seed-growing region, because of the danger of their volunteer growth in succeeding crops. These spurious Alaska peas would be especially bad in this way, and there will always be the danger that they may be substituted carelessly or by design for true Alaska stock. Any locality hoping to build up a reputation as a seed-pea region would be very greatly handicapped by growing this so-called Alaska as a field pea.

DESCRIPTION OF ALASKA PEAS AND SPURIOUS FORMS. The true Alaska variety is described as follows:

Stem 2 to 24 feet high, never branching; leaves medium size, light yellowish green in color; flowers white, usually solitary, beginning to appear at the sixth to eighth joint of the stem; pods straight, end blunt, well filled with seeds, three to six to a plant; season very early, each plant ripening all its pods very nearly at the same time. Dry seed, green, may be all smooth, but usually shows many pitted seeds, these characters being apparently much influenced by climatic conditions. (See fig. 4, A.)