BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



and if they seem to the reader to be over enthusiastic, 

 I invite him to share with me the pleasure of sampling 

 some of its fruit. When well grown it is beautifully 

 colored, making it one of our most attractive apples. But 

 fruit growers like it most because it hangs on to the trees 

 until the fruit can be picked. When the Mcintosh is be- 

 ginning to shrivel and to lose its piquant flavor, the Cort- 

 land is just coming into its prime. It is an early winter apple, 

 while the Mcintosh is at its best only in the fall. The flesh 

 is as white as the Snow apple — the grandfather, probably, 

 of all the Mcintosh family. Though it has a flavor much 

 like the Mcintosh, it is richer and sweeter and with less 

 aroma, but more firm and just as juicy. 



In the same way, hardy pears have been produced at 

 the Iowa station for the upper Mississippi Valley where, 

 up to the present time, the trees have badly winterkilled. 

 Plums and grapes are also grown in Dakota and Minnesota 

 where formerly little good fruit of this type was available. 



Vegetable crops have received as much attention as 

 fruits. Although grown for thousands of years in South 

 America, where it was first planted by man, and in North 

 America before the coming of the European settlers, the 

 potato did not begin to assume its present form until 

 the middle of the past century. Early Rose was the first 

 variety of modern type to be generally cultivated. The 

 history of Early Rose begins with the Reverend Chauncey 

 Goodrich of Utica, New York. Goodrich had the idea 

 that the potato, as a result of long continued vegetative 

 propagation, had become weakened and was no longer 

 able to withstand the disease that was then causing so 

 much damage. Through the American Consul at Panama 

 he arranged to have a number of different kinds of South 

 American potatoes sent to him from which he planned to 

 grow seedlings. One of the importations he named Rough 

 Purple Chili, from its appearance and the place where 



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