If only they were in color as well, Denise! One thing that has frustrated me about many of the tomato descriptions in the really old seed catalog is the scarcity of adjectives - color, size, flavor, shape - it is all pretty general and pretty brief....though it didn't take long for the opposite to happen - descriptions that made every tomato offered sound like the most wonderful variety in existence (ah, the joy of marketing!).
Now that I have one from the 1870's, I wonder if I can get lucky some day and find one from the 1860s???
Wouldn't it be something if the variety "Hugh's", maintained by Archie Hook in Indiana from the 1940s, was a descendant of or relation to the variety Persian, as described in this catalog?
One other thing interesting - there are all of 3 eggplant listed (one of which is New York Improved - a variety I grow regularly, and it looks just like their illustration!), and they describe one as having purple and white stripes - so Listada di Gandia, available today, may in fact be quite an old variety.
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Craig
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