IS ACCLIMATIZATION AN IMPOSSIBILITY? 75 



find. So far as our information goes, the cherry is a native of Persia, 

 and here is an illustration which conflicts with the law. When I have 

 eaten such magnificent cherries, as I have in Scandinavian countries and 

 in England, the same latitude as our Labrador, and find a thing which we 

 have no thought of hybdridizing, I think that the law is met there com- 

 pletely. So far as we know, the peach is a native of Persia, with the 

 exception that we have found it is also apparently a native of Manchuria. 

 Whether the Persian peach came from Manchuria, or the Manchurian came 

 from Persia, in prehistoric times, we do not know, but I think we have 

 a right to assume that the peach is a native of Persia, and the Manchurian 

 peach in some way strayed from Persia. If that thing it true, there is no 

 comflict of the law. So far as we know, the currant is a native of the 

 southern countries of Europe. It gets its name from Greece, and the 

 currant is a native of Corinth. This is one of the laws which eliminates 

 evidence. It is like the criminal trial to-day, in that you cannot introduce 

 any evidence; — this is eliminated and that is excluded, and you have got 

 nothing and the fellow gets free ; so it is with this law, when you come 

 to think about it. I am going to stand by the cherry and the peach and 

 the currant, unless you can prove their origin from somewhere except the 

 historic origin. 



Dr. Hansen— You will have to eliminate the currants, Mr. President. 

 But the currant which we buy in the market, and is grown on the coast 

 of Corinth, is not a currant at all, but a grape. But our currant is a 

 native of that region. We call it a currant, and what we call a currant 

 comes from Asia Minor. 



Mr. Munson — I think the position of Dr. Hansen can be sustained, 

 if he would only give us the definition of procedure. If he means that I 

 should pick a half a bushel of wheat out of a pile grown upon a field of 

 wheat, indiscriminately, and sow it, and from the pile grown on that 

 field, take another half bushel and sow that, and so on, it might take four 

 or five thousand years to get a hardy wheat, and I can hardly conceive 

 you would get one very hardy then. 



The President — But you have got to get your wheat and leave it 

 out of doors during the winter. You have got to have that seed carried 

 through the winter. 



Dr. Hansen — Let us have the whole thing. Give us the whole 

 thought, whatever you have. 



Mr. Munson — Take indiscriminately a lot of apple seeds out of an 

 orchard, and plant another seedling orchard, and then take the seed out 

 of that indiscriminatel}', an equal quantity, and continue to plant in that 

 same quantity right along. You may take the seedlings from the orchard 

 a thousand generations ahead, into a hardier climate, and they would be 

 no more inured than the first one you started from. Now, I am on the 

 Doctor's side that far, but suppose that I take that half bushel of apple 

 seeds and plant an orchard of it here or in Texas and out of the most 

 vigorous of those trees, I take a like quantity of seeds and plant them in 



