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The Canadian Horticulturist, 9- 



radically different it has almost blotted out their connection. When we realize 

 that these orientals became separated from our natives, and surrounded with a 

 genial climate, show the influence of a high civilization for unknown ages, 

 while our natives had to struggle against climate, savage beasts, wild and 

 destructive races and tribes of, mankind, and were left entirely to natures's law, 

 the "survival of the fittest," in the great struggle for existence, the only won- 

 der, it seems to me, is that, under such different conditions and treatment for 

 ages, we can find a trace of their origin, and relationship. I have expressed 

 my views to some of our Pomologists, and will give brief extracts from a few 

 of their letters, bearing on the subject. 



P. J. Berckman of Augusta, Ga., says : '* Your idea of a connecting link of 

 the flora of Japan with that of the North American continent coincides with 

 what my dear old friend, the late Prof. Asa Gray, once told me, that he found a 

 wonderful similarity between some of the p'ants of the United States with their 

 congeners from Japan, which made the study of the latter so very interesting to 

 him. You modestly term yours a wild idea ; permit me to say that it is far from 

 such, and really, in your letter, you but substantiate facts." 



Prof. Bailey, of Cornell University, New York, says : "I am much interested 

 in your letter upon the Japanese plums. The fruits of Japan and the United 

 States are really very closely related. The two countries were once connected 

 at the north-west, and the flora of both originated far north, and was driven 

 southward by changes in external conditions." 



Prof. G. Goodale, of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., says : 

 *' You will find in the Article Sequoia, in Dr. Asa Gray's Darwinia, an 

 account of his views in regard to the relation existing between the vegetation 

 of Japan and parts of the United States. It is very interesting to know that 

 you have independently, by your study of plums, arrived at the same conclusions 

 as to many points." 



W. A. Taylor, Assistant Pomologist U. S. Department of Agriculture, says : 

 *' In regard to the Japan fruits about which you write, I am glad to receive your 

 report concerning them. Your conclusion on that they must have been native 

 in a more severe climate than that of Japan, is no doubt a correct one." 



Prof. C. S. Sargent, who has devoted much time to the investigation of 

 Japan trees, and who spent the summer in Japan this year, states that he finds 

 no wild representative of the species to which the cultivated Japanese plums 

 belong." 



J. L. Normand, of Marksville, La., writes : " I find that the Japanese plums 

 have a wide geographical adaptation in the United States ; most of them will 

 succeed from the great lakes to the Gulf coast, and as to their relationship with 

 our native sorts, the more I study them, the more I find that they sprung from 

 the same race of plums. The flora of Japan and the United States has a close 

 resemblance in many of our wild plants." 



