And I am happy that they are accessible at the U.S. Agriculture site.
A treasure trove of information that we can all access.
This message was edited Oct 4, 2010 10:27 AM
This message was edited Oct 10, 2010 5:14 AM
NARGS Seed Exchange - new donor question
Just to let you folks know that though I received my check back from Norman Deno today, as his book is no longer in publication, he is still alive. I thought you might be interested in the letter he sent, so I typed it out. This is what he said:
I regret to say that I have closed out the publication, sale, and distribution of my three books on seed germination. These were “Seed Germination Theory and Practice and the first and second supplements. I am 89 years old and have to scale back my activities.
It is fair to say that these books revolutionized the field of germinating seeds. Around 50,000 copies were mailed to all corners of the world.
All copyrights are given up and anyone is free to reproduce the books, sell them, or do anything they want with them.
If anyone is in the State College area feel free to stop by. We have about ten acres with a variety of habitats such as a trout stream, a marsh, steep hillsides with natural rock outcrops, oak woods, and walnut woods. We do not have the variety of alpine plants that we once had, but there is still a wide variety of plants. They are largely grown as self sowing colonies. There are some rarities such as Arisaema quinata (five leaved jack-in-the-pulpit), Trollius laxus, and Trillium flexipes.
Sincerely yours,
Norman C. Deno
(below this, handwritten):
Thank you for writing. Norm
Right now we have a variety of asters blooming that are hybrids of Aster nova-arglae (native on our property) and Aster oblongifolius from Claude Barr in Dakota. Three outstanding seedlings are a clear ruby-red in color.
Well I tried to access the link to download Deno's book, but kept getting error messages, so I went directly to the USDA National Library Website and tried many different places to do searches, but it didn't recognize the name of the book anywhere, and just about whatever I clicked on I got error messages, including "Contact Us".
Thankfully, as I was getting really aggravated, up popped a survey to fill out about their website, and I at least got to tell them that it stunk!!!
I used the link on the JL Hudson site and didn't have any problem downloading the first book. (I have the books, but I thought I'd just try to see if it works.) It is a large file - 12 MB, but even on dial-up it came through fine (just took a while). And I didn't get any error messages. I use the Firefox browser. The download is into you browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.), and then you need to save it to your computer.
Is your pdf reader up to date? (Adobe, Fox-it reader, PDF exchange, etc.) Recently there has been some major updates to Adobe because of malware vulnerability. If you need some help with this I can tutor you via dmail.
Rick
This message was edited Oct 10, 2010 8:06 AM
Hi Rick. Thanks for your offer of help. Probably nothing is up to date as I'm afraid of updating programs as I know I need more RAM and am afraid of making it worse til I get some and install it (if I can figure out how). I did manage to access the link this morning, though, and started printing the book in 25 page batches, but now I'm afraid that my trusty old Laserjet 4L may be kaput. It said paperjam, which I cleared, but still won't print and makes a horrendous loud noise when I try, and still is blinking paperjam, though I don't think there is a paperjam. It's never made this noise before.
I do have another printer, but it's a 4 color machine with teeny expensive cartridges, so I only use it for photos or if I have to copy or fax something. I can't imagine how many cartridges I'd need to print a book. Anyway, at least I know that I can at least occasionally access the website, so I guess I'll get copies of the book eventually.