CAN WE BREED HARDINESS INTO TREES AND PLANTS? 



323 



As I view it, we have had too much De Candole pessimism 

 spread over our horticultural and breeders' conventions of recent 

 years. What the purpose is I am unable to understand. 



We are not dealing, except in a limited way, with native trees or 

 fruits ; if we were then selection as a first step toward progress must 

 play a very important part. We are dealing mostly with cultivated, 

 civilized plants, and if we cross-fertilize with the highest skill and 

 with our very best combinations, even then critical and rigid selec- 

 tion must be had, or we shall fail in our purpose to advance. 



Does any one believe that because the wild crab apple, or our 

 native butternut and walnut, does not extend farther to the west 



Four year old trees— winter of 1905. Notice the remarkable difference in size, one 



tree in the ten fully twice the size of any of the others. The same thing has 



occurred in other crosses where there were only three to five trees. 



and northwest on our prairies, that specimens cannot be found in 

 our groves that are sufficiently hardy to permit of their successful 

 culture a hundred miles or more beyond their present limits? In 

 your discussions last winter, Mr. Underwood very pertinently asked, 

 what is hardiness? and then proceeded to answer it correctly, as it 

 appears to me, by saying, in substance, that they were hardy because 

 they were adapted to the conditions in which they are. Plants are 

 hardy, as he says, in South America, because they are adapted to 

 the climate and soil conditions of South America. Plants are 



