There is no pleasure like the ever-new exultation and joy of seeing the things we ourselves have planted come up; and these lovely colored shoots, springing from the brown earth, serve to renew our faith in the bounty of Nature and the loving order of the world—as well as to fill our pockets. LETTUCE. The most popular salad crop is lettuce, a hardy, short-season, companion- or succession-crop requiring moist, rich, mellow soil, and plant food in quickly available form. It is easy of culture and is chiefly grown in the open, though the demand for it has increased to such an extent that it is started in hot-beds or forcing houses that it may be earlier on the market. You can get it in about five weeks. Coolness and continuous growth are necessary to prevent toughness and bitterness. It is little grown in the summer, though the Cos variety can stand the hot weather very well, if the soil is moist and cool. Lettuce does better if transplanted and for that reason it is usually sown in seed-beds; in transplanting, it is usual to cut off the top third of the leaves, unless the seedlings are very stocky; but the mid-season and later crops may be sown where the plants are to stand. Fall lettuce should be sown in late August or early September, and, as it is easier to control soil conditions and to get quick sprouting in a seed-bed than in the field at that dry time of year, it is better to use the seed-bed. At any time lettuce does best in a soil that is loose and “warm,” that is known to gardeners as “quick.” Heavy, clayey soils are not adapted to lettuce, so see that your soil is pulverized and well fertilized before the seeds are sown. It has been found to pay well to treat the soil with nitrate of soda after the plants are set, because of the more rapid growth. The soda is applied dry, at the rate of two or three hundred pounds to the acre, and then raked or tilled in. Lettuce seed is sown thickly and the plants thinned, as they become edible, to about a foot apart. The thinnings make excellent “greens.” The rows are usually 8 to 12 inches apart. When grown as a succession-crop, lettuce may be followed by cabbage, early cauliflower, celery and other things. Or, it may be grown between the cabbages and cauliflower as a companion-crop, since it matures before either, and leaves the land to those plants when they need all the space. Seed may be sown successionally until warm weather, and you may count upon 1000 plants for each ounce of seed. There are three well-known tribes: head lettuce, cut or curly-leaved, and Cos, and a fourth variety little known, called narrow-leaved lettuce. There are about 100 varieties. Field-grown lettuce has few enemies. ENDIVE.