VEGETABLE POWER OF ACCOMMODATION. 65 



commerce as the Zante currant, has resisted ahnost all efforts to 

 naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely grown excej)t in two or 

 three of the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory on the 

 northern shores of the Morea. 



The attempts to introduce European varieties of the vine into 

 the United States have not been successful except in California,* 

 and perhaps in Texas ; but cultivation has improved many native 

 stocks to a degree that renders them fairly equal to the vines of 

 Europe, f On the other hand, American garden vegetables are 

 less luxuriant, productive and tasteful in Europe than in the 

 United States, and many of them lose their special qualities and 

 run out^ as the phrase is, in a very few crops.:}: 



The saline atmosphere of the sea is especially injurious both to ' 

 seeds and to very many young plants, and it is only recently that 

 the transportation of some very important vegetables across the 

 ocean has been made practicable, through the invention of Ward's 

 air-tight glass cases. By this means large numbers of the trees 

 which produce the Jesuit's bark were successfully transplanted 

 from America to the British possessions in the East, where this 

 valuable plant may now be said to have become fully natural- 

 ized.§ 



Yegetables, naturalized abroad either by accident or design, 

 sometimes exhibit a greatly increased luxuriance of growth. The 



* In 1869, a vine of a European variety, planted in Sta. Barbara county in 

 1833, measured a foot in diameter four feet above the ground. Its ramifica- 

 tions covered ten thousand square feet of surface, and it annually produces 

 twelve thousand pounds of grapes. The bunches are sixteen or eighteen 

 Inches long, and weigh six or seven pounds. — Letter from Commissioner of 

 Land-Office, dated May 13, 1869. 



f The American vines introduced into Europe have, for the most part, with- 

 stood the destructive effects of the phylloxera, and they have been substituted 

 in many French vineyards for the original plants. 



:J: Thus American sweet corn, Lima beans and marrowfat pease require the 

 importation of new seed every two or three years. 



§ See Cleghorn, Forests and Gardens of South India, Edinburgh, 1861, 

 and The British Parliamentary Return on the Chinchona plant, 1866. It has 

 been found that the seeds of several species of chinchona preserve their vitality 

 long enough to be transported to distant regions. The swiftness of steam- 

 navigation renders it possible to transport to foreign countries, not only seeds, 

 but delicate living plants which could not have borne a long voyage by sailing 

 vessels. 



