STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 393 



they may become acclimated. It is not too much of prophetic 

 hopefulness to say that, in due time, what are now considered 

 non-hardy here, but hardy enough for the South, will be iron- 

 clads with our best. If we faithfully pave the way, generations 

 to come will grow all over the Northwest the Baldwin, the Spitz- 

 bergin, the Greening and the like, with greater facility than we 

 now grow the Wealthy, the Duchess, and the Eussians. 



There is no certainty that a highly perfected variety, whether 

 plant or animal, will retain its original points when transplanted 

 beyond its native environment. Hardy in Eussia may not 

 always be hardy with us, as exj)erimentation proves. There are 

 local influences everywhere at work that elude the grasp of the 

 stethescope or the thermometer. Evidently every plant, and 

 animal as well, contains, germinally, the constituency and im- 

 press of its origin, of its species, of its variety, of its comj)lex 

 relations, through all the ages of its evolution. If this be so, it 

 requires but a special environment to call out a corresponding 

 force or quality. But here we are lost in mystery again. We 

 are unable by any art or analysis to determine how a special 

 tinge inheres with the germ in the seed; how plants are locally 

 zoned; how the shadow of one tree upon another^ay strengthen 

 or weaken it ; how an underground pebble, shaping a fibrous 

 root, may feed or famish the stalk; how the rustling touch of a 

 neighborly leaf may divide the sunshine, depleting j)ower of 

 endurance ; how the thermal reflection of a sheltering rock or 

 sod, the kiss of a dewdrop or zephyr in the stilly evening, may 

 give texture and mould to a j^lant, imperceptibly defining 

 whether it belongs to the torrid, the temperate, or the frigid 

 classification — hardy to live or non-hardy to die, when trans- 

 planted to stand alone. 



As best we can let us look a moment within the circle of en- 

 vironment. Scientists have demonstrated that living things are 

 in constant, tremulous motion; that whenever two bodies are 

 synchonous, or in concord relative to each other, there is a man- 

 ifestation of force or growth in new form. To account for phe- 

 nomena they accept the ancient hypothesis of an ether, which, as 

 Prof. Tyndall presents it, "conveys the pulses of light and heat, 

 not only fills the celestial spaces, bathing the sides of suns and 

 planets, but it also encircles the atoms of which these suns and 

 planets are composed." The atoms are differently keyed in dif- 

 ferent bodies; hence, their resultant motion is different, as dem- 

 onstrated by our sensations. Take, for instance, several pieces 

 50 



