242 Ilississipjn Valley Horticultural Society. 



has often been done. But to produce desirable varieties for general cultiva- 

 tion or for a given location, is a problem not yet fully solved. 



This is what I understand to be the subject under consideration, and, tO' 

 more fully illustrate it, I will have to show what will or what will not suc- 

 ceed in a locality or district, for this appears to be the foundation upon which 

 we have to work to accomplish anything. For if we have no clear concej)- 

 tion before us of what we want and where we will have to go to lind it, we 

 will be groping our way in the dark and have nothing but conjecture and un- 

 certainty in our work. 



Take the apple, for instance, our most staple fruit, that has, perhaps, as wide 

 a range as any species; we iind many of its varieties conlined to a very 

 limitad range. 



There is, perhaps, no winter apple in cultivation that will succeed as such- 

 two hundred miles south of its place of origin. There is a geographical 

 boundary for every variety. Take an apple, for instance, that matures in 

 Massachusetts on the 27th of October ; it will mature in Pennsylvania the 

 19th, New Jersey the 18th, Ohio the 16th, Illinois the loth, Indiana and 

 Maryland the 11th, Delaware the 7th, Virginia and Missouri the oth, Kansas 

 the 4th, Kentucky the 3d, Tennessee the 2d, and North Carolina the 1st. In 

 these extremes we have very nearly a month's difference in season, and in 

 the mean temperature a difference of 8.6 degrees. This fact has been either 

 disregarded or overlooked in procuring and producing new varieties. 



In our eager desire to get hardy sorts, we have exhausted the resources of 

 the North, and have gone to Russia in the hope of meeting with better suc- 

 cess; but what is the result of our labor? We have got scarcely anything 

 but acid summer and fall cooking apples. This might have been anticipated, 

 as it is not in the natural order of development. 



Neither can we hope for much better from the seedlings of such. We 

 might as well go to Minnesota or the North, and endeavor to raise corn 

 adapted to the South from the seed of Northern corn. 



Nature's method is always to perpetuate a variety under the conditions in 

 which it is grown. All of its energies are concentrated to that end, and if 

 grown there uninterruptedly for generations it would become a marked 

 tj'pe of that location, and the fittest of its seedlings only would survive and 

 continue their existence. Such varieties could not be expected to be adapted 

 to any great range of latitude except by gradual development. This being 

 the case, there must be a meteorological zone of adaptibility for a variety as 

 well as for a species. 



While we admit that hardy varieties may be procured in the North, it 

 does not follow that they can not be found anywhere else ; for we have had 

 ;is hardy varieties, from the South and on our own grounds, as the Duchesse 

 of Oldenburg, one of the most hardy of the Russian type, and some of the 

 wild grapes of Arkansas are as hardy as those of New England. 



Neither docs it follow because a variety will endure the cold of the North 

 that it is healthy, and will also endure the heat of the South; for the crab- 



