A CORNER OF VAN FLEET'S PLANT BREEDING GARDEN 



A miniature greenhouse, a tool and storage shed in which seed is threshed out with a flail 

 or small mill and a lath shed under which tender seedlings and cuttings are protected from 

 the sun, constitute the main equipment of the garden (Fig. 6). 



once visited that great plant enthusiast 

 John Rock, of Niles, Cal., and found his 

 little office in the midst of a big nursery. 

 I visited last winter the remarkable 

 place of Doctor Nehrling, near Gotha, 

 Florida, where those wonderful varie- 

 gated Caladimns originate, and where 

 hosts of other new ])lants are growing 

 and being studied. There is that won- 

 derful place of Chas. T. vSimpson, at 

 Little River, Fla., where, although little 

 breeding is being done, thousands of new 

 plants are being tested. The Marquis 

 wheat, I was told by an old friend of the 

 late Doctor Saunders, of Ottawa, ori- 

 ginated in the Doctor's little garden 

 quite near his house. One of the most 

 fascinating places in all Canada I foimd 

 to be the home of Mr. A. P. Stevenson, 

 of Morden, where the Russian apples 

 first succeeded and showed their possi- 

 bilities for Canada. 



Mr. T. A. Sharpc's place at Salmon 

 Arm, B. C, has the fascination of an 

 intipiate plant breeding station. 

 114 



The small branch station at Talent, 

 Oregon, with its twenty acres of pears, 

 is an ideal place, and it is in the quiet 

 mornings in that charming little nursery 

 that Doctor Reimer has discovered the 

 l>light resistance of the Chinese pear 

 species, P. iissiiriensis and P. Callcrvana. 

 P^dward Simmonds, in our Plant Intro- 

 duction Garden at Miami, working in 

 the still mornings there, has ]:)roduced 

 remarkable hybrid annonas and selected 

 and improved papayas. The striking 

 work in the improvement of the Egyp- 

 tian cotton which has made i^ossible the 

 extensive dcxeloimient of this crop in 

 the Im]X'rial Valley was done by Kear- 

 ney, Cook and others in a little tem- 

 porary field laboratory at Somerton, 

 Arizona. Dr. Byron D. Ilalsted, of New 

 Jersey, with whom I was associated for 

 years, has been hampered always, it has 

 seemed to me, by the fact that his plants 

 and his laboratories were, until recent 

 years, far apart, and he had to drag his 

 sjiccimcns back and forth, and it 



