. TWO HOUBS WITH LUTHER BURBANK, ETC. 385 



Mr. J. M. Underwood: I did not hear Prof. Sandsten's 

 question fully answered by Prof. Hansen about the adaptation of 

 plants, as to the effect of environment on an apple grown here in 

 Minnesota for a series of years or the growing of seedlings from 

 that apple for a series of years and selecting the hardiest in that 

 way. Would the Minnesota environment, the Minnesota climate, 

 produce a change in the variety so as to secure hardiness, the same 

 as when as we go to Illinois, as I did last spring and bought a 

 nice variety of seed corn. It is not thoroughly adapted to our 

 climate here in Minnesota, but I am expecting that by the selec- 

 tion of the first ripened ears of that corn this fall and planting it 

 the next spring, and continuing to do so for a series of years, the 

 character of that corn will be so changed that it will finally be 

 thoroughly adapted to growing in Minnesota. As I understand, 

 Prof. Sandsten wants to know whether a similar process would 

 take place in fruit. 



Prof. Hansen : About Indian corn — in its natfve home in 

 Peru and Central America it has been growing for thousands of 

 years. In its native home it gets to be twenty feet high and takes 

 seven months to mature. In the north it grows five feet high 

 and takes three months to mature or less. In nortnern Europe 

 where the nights are cool you see corn raised as an ornamental 

 plant in the center of a flower bed. They cannot ripen corn and 

 will not be able to do so. Corn has not changed in its demand 

 for semi-tropical heat. You have never seen corn that will stand 

 frost like cabbage. Cabbage has been grown for thousands of 

 years on the frosty seacoast of Europe. We will never have 

 corn that will stand frost and cool nights like cabbage. The 

 box elder from the south will not succeed in Canada, as our Ca- 

 nadian friends have learned to their cost. The box elder from 

 the south will winter-kill. You can tell a southern from a north- 

 ern box elder by the botanical characteristics, but when you get 

 a southern box elder up here it will kill to the ground. Nature 

 has adapted the box elder, red cedar and others to immense areas 

 with widely varying conditions. The Russian government has 

 found that the Scotch pine from western Europe is an utter fail- 

 ure, while the Scotch pine of Siberia is a perfect success. How 

 many thousand years did it take nature to do that work, and is 

 there any use in man taking up that work that would take thou- 

 sands of years to finish? We must take advantage of nature's 

 work, and that is why I insist that in our apple work we must 

 study the situation, and we must not select tender varieties, but 

 only hardy ones that will resist the climate. All needed hardi- 

 ness must be there when we begin, the hardiness that has been 

 there for thousands of years. 



Prof. Sandsten : I do not disagree with Prof. Hansen in 

 his general theory, but if we look at it in a broader aspect I think 

 we will have to admit that plants adapt themselves to their en- 



