THE CABBAGE is a native of Europe, and grows wild along the sea coasts of England. The wild plant lives for two years, has fleshy leaves, and is so different from the cabbages of the garden as not to be recognized as their parent. Under cultivation this one species of plant (_Brassica oleracea_[1]) has produced the Savoy, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, borecole,[2] etc. A more wonderful plant and a more useful one is seldom found in the whole range of the vegetable kingdom. The Romans did much to extend the culture of the cabbage. In Scotland it was not generally known until the time of Cromwell. Much improvement has been made in American sorts of cabbages within the past fifty years. In the wild state the cabbage has a hard, woody stalk, but the fine specimens in market have only a small stem, bearing a large, compact head, of closely folded leaves. The first essential in the successful growing of cabbage is the right kind of soil. It should be a sandy loam, with a gravelly, and not a clayey subsoil. Soil that is naturally wet must be thoroughly underdrained before being devoted to cabbage growing. The importance of an abundance of well rotted manure can not be too fully impressed upon the mind of any person contemplating the production of excellent cabbages. Much that may be here said concerning the preparation of the soil for growing cabbages applies with equal force to the other vegetables treated in this article. Earliness is one of the leading points to be gained in raising most garden crops. It is the man with the first load of cabbages that gets the best price in the market. There is a great deal of stress to be placed upon the proper selection of seed, but seed is not all. The young plants of the earliest sorts must be fed, and they require this food at an early stage in their growth, when chemical changes are only slowly going on in the soil. In other words, early crops need a far larger amount of manure for their satisfactory growth than crops started in midsummer, when the soil is rapidly yielding up its food elements. Early crops need to grow in cool spring weather, and therefore should be abundantly supplied with food in an available form. Mr. Gregory says in his excellent pamphlet on “How to Grow Cabbages,” “If the farmer desires to make the utmost use of his manure for that season, it will be best to put most of it into the hill, particularly if his supply runs rather short; but if he desires to leave his land in good condition for next year’s crop, he had better use part of it broadcast. My own practice is to use all my rich compost broadcast, and depend on guano, phosphates, or hen manure in the hill.” This view of heavy manuring is confirmed by Mr. Henderson, in his “Farm and Garden Topics,” when he says: “For the early cabbage crop it should always be spread on broadcast, and in quantity not less than one hundred cart loads or seventy-five tons to the acre.… After plowing in the manure, and before the ground is harrowed,