This is an amusing world. What would men do without the Agricultural Department to find fault with ? and yet they are always calling out for it to assist in some of their pet schemes. They denounce the tariff and then want it enlarged to protect American seedsmen, although we all along thought these same seedsmen were the largest importers of seeds in the country, and only raised a few seeds that are better grown here than abroad. Some things are rather hard to regulate by law, and seed raising is one of them ; but when it comes to naming varieties it is harder to regulate by law than the naming of children. If I raise a seedling turnip, I can call it anything I please, but if any one is disposed to obtain seed of my turnip and raise turnips of their own, they can re-name them from the nine muses or anything else they choose, although I couldn't myself tell the difference in the roots, if there was any. People would buy according to the name they like best and wouldn't trouble themselves about me or the other fellow. If I brought over a German fuchsia or rose with a name that would startle a Russian I would have to change it before it would be an "American beauty " or the flower would not be appreciated.

The law might give me the right to my bush and its sale, but everyone might have their own bushes and own names, patents, copyrights or whatever the law chose to give them. Whoever knew a seedsman to have a new bean, bush or climbing, but every other one bad a bean as soon as it was known, just like it, excepting in i name ? The only difference between peas is, that each man's is the earliest. We fear that it would do little good to give them all a patent for the earliest lettuce, and if the honors were divided, those with large gardens would raise their own seeds before they would go to a hundred different dealers to be supplied. We would like "Uncle Jerry" to help us, and would help him in doing any real good, but politicians always did mix seeds badly, and it does little good to tell us that the agricultural interests are depressed when with our present imperfections we can raise more than we can sell. The law cannot change the color of the grass, and is there not an old song that has something in it about " when the trees in summer time their verdure dare not show?" Even the pesky Canadian thistle defies the law. - J. D. W.