484 



HORTICULTURE 



April 14, 1906 



divided into li 1 leaflets; the fertile fronds are 



in narrow long leaflets; a good basket 

 plant. 



Acrostichum (Soromanes) coenopteris from Mexico 

 has the same fronds as the preceding, growing on 

 woody, creeping root stocks. This and A. sorbi folium 

 should be grown on old tree trunks. 



Acrostichum (Polvbotrya) acuminatum from Brazil 

 has long-stalked fronds, once divided, the leafllets cut 

 to the mid-ribs. The lower leaflets are longer and 

 deeper cut than the upper; the fertile fronds are 

 smaller, two and three times divided. 



Acrostichum (Polybotrya) osmundaceum from Cen- 

 tral America is another climbing fern. The pendulous 

 fronds are very large and three times divided, of a dark 

 green color ; the fertile fronds are erect with very narrow 

 divisions. In the natural state it covers whole tree 

 trunks to a height of twenty feet. 



Acrostichum (Rhipidopteris) peltata is a small-grow- 

 ing, creeping species from West Indies and Central 

 America. The fronds are not four inches high and 

 two broad, are round, divided and sub-divided into 

 narrow strips; the fertile ones are round entire or 

 slightly lobed. It likes to grow in a damp atmosphere. 



Platyceriums are the most interesting plants in the 

 fern family, with their big round convex sterile fronds, 

 not unlike an inside cabbage leaf, which in some 

 species are deeply lobed, and their curious divided 

 stau r 's-horn-like fertile ones. P. Aethiopicum (stem- 

 maria) from West Africa with broad fertile fronds, 

 alcicorne from Australia, the most common ones, alci- 

 corne majus from South Asia, with nice erect fertile 

 fronds, biforme from Malayan Peninsula with very 

 long fronds, Hillii from North Australia and Wallichii, 

 are the most showy. These with Willinckii from Java 

 with three kinds of fronds and one or two of recent 

 introduction are all that are in cultivation. In their 

 native country they all grow on trees with no other soil 

 than decayed matter. In greenhouses they grow best 

 treated like epiphitical acrostichum, with little water 

 at the roots. 



^-7^ ^J^^-^t** 



The Deterioration of Varieties 



Editor Horticulture — My Dear Sir: The issue 

 of Horticulture for March third contains an arti- 

 cle by N. B. White which has interested me greatly, 

 and which has suggested to me some points whereon I 

 think Mr. White is not quite clear. 



In opening, he says, "we hear a great deal of late 

 about natural forces propelling every living thing on- 

 ward and upward toward more perfect conditions." To 

 these two last words I take especial exception. Natural 

 selection never undertook to bring "living things toward 

 more perfect conditions," nor did it ever undertake to 

 explain the origin of those changes which people deal- 

 ing with the breeding of living things call "improve- 

 ments and perfections." Mature and man have very 

 different ideas as to what constitute "improvements 

 and perfections." Natural selection does not work on 

 the environment as suggested in "more perfect condi- 

 tions" but upon the living thing itself, making it more 

 fit to live in its en t. Natural selection is the 



name applied to that force in nature, which, by elimin- 

 ating the unfit, leaves the fit to reproduce its kind, a 

 race, improved in o cope with its natural en- 



vironment and all the struggles that entails. Just here 

 Mr. White seems confused; he is trying to make a 

 natural law answer for artificial "improvements" and 

 for conditions arising from artificial environments ; and, 

 forsooth, when the culture and care of that artificial 

 environment are gone, he holds Dame Nature respon- 

 sible because she does not keep up the creature she 

 abhors, since man has bred it to the point where it could 

 not fulfil the natural life of its kind under natural con- 

 ditions. Life in nature has two ends and only two, 

 the first, to procure food that the creature may attain 

 maturity, thus enabled to fulfil its second end, the re- 

 production of its kind. What florist's flower could live 

 that life? The carnation? The rose? Could Mr. Bur- 

 bank's much vaunted spineless cactus withstand the 

 terrors of the desert which its ancestors endured, and 

 endured that it might live? In deducing such wide- 

 spread conclusions as Mr. White's, care must be taken 

 not to mix the facts and the law of the case. He has 

 not observed planets or animals in a state of nature, 

 or if he has, does not draw his illustrations from such 

 observation, and so he can not state what they would 

 do under such conditions. Does he consider that Bald- 

 win apple trees in an orchard are in any way subject 

 to the action of the law of natural selection? What 

 struggle is there in that orchard for food, what chance 

 is there that any bird can eat of that pulp fruit suffi- 

 cient to swallow some of its seeds and carry them far 

 afield thus giving the second generation opportunity 

 to live its life, did he follow nature's method and raise 

 his Baldwin apple trees from seed? What advantage 

 is it to the Concord grape vine to bear bunches weighing 

 two pounds and over? Can that enormous bunch pro- 

 duce more seeds? Are those that it does produce of 

 greater vitality? Those are the only points of contact 

 between real nature and her children. Such states of 

 life are, as Mr. White says further on, evidences of 

 weakness and unfit the product for a natural state. To 

 narrow the question for convenience's sake and to suit 

 the character of your journal, a plant must produce 

 seeds, or it loses its sole raison d'etre in nature's realm. 

 Again, Mr. White does not take into consideration that 

 nature reproduces almost exclusively by seeds, thus 

 giving each succeeding generation an infusion of new 

 blood and new inheritances ; while man almost as ex- 

 clusively makes his increase vegetatively by cuttings or 

 grafting or some similar way, then, as he never selects 

 his stock at all, reviles nature for his own shortcomings 

 and their resultant failures and degeneration. 



Again, I take exception to the statement that "the 

 time will surely come when the inhabitants of this earth 

 will be obliged to contend with products inferior to 

 what we now have." Not unless these self same in- 

 habitants battened upon the "improvements" wrought 

 by their forebears settle back in slothful ease mentally 

 and physically, as they show great danger of doing, and 

 here should be sounded the note of warning. 



The "elements of decay" mentioned in the last para- 

 graph illustrate, as I have mentioned, my point from 

 beginning to end. Man breeds for ends purely selfish. 

 his own advancement, comfort and luxury, unmindful 

 of aught but himself and his present ; nature breeds for 

 work, for life, for strength, for ability to fisdit well and 



to win. 



Very truly yours. 



fliuaJ ^V>-> 



Dorranceton, Pa., March 17, 1906. 



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