PROCEEDINGS OF Till: FARMERS' CLUB. 209 



ACCLIMATION. 



Rev. Mr. Weaver considered the question of the return of 

 plants to their former state foreign to the question of acclimation. 



Prof. Mapes considered it an important practical question, and 

 stated that it had come up as a collateral question ; the opinion 

 having been advanced that there had been permanent changes, 

 which he could not admit. 



Dr. Holton, agreeably to the request of the club, read the fol- 

 lowing translation of an extract from the opening address of Prof. 

 St. Hilaire, President of the Society of Acclimation of France, 

 on the occasion of its third anniversary. 



" Each climate has its productions ; each region its animal and 

 vegetable species. But has nature there invincibly attached 

 them ? Has she placed laws forbidding their passing the bounds 

 of their original country ? Are they like the waves of the sea 

 which are condemned to come to break eternally, at the foot of 

 the same rocks, their lifeless force, their useless violence. 



" Has God said to them ' Thus far and no farther.' Let us look 

 around us and we shall see everywhere the same answer. 



"Among the vegetables, the wheat, the vine, the potato and a 

 multitude of others — are they the gifts of our soil? No; the 

 wheat and the vine have come to us from the east, the potato 

 from America — plants acclimated in Europe, the two first from 

 time immemorial; the other in the 16th century. They are now 

 more multiplied among us, because more useful than any others 

 which nature placed here. 



"Immense benefits, and so great that in the estimation of the 

 ancients they could not have come except from divine hands. 

 Ceres, Triptolemus and Bacchus have their places in Olympus. 

 Gods of Peace aside the Gods of War, and the most beloved if 

 not the most fearful. 



"Pious enthusiasm, ardent gratitude of young humanity, with 

 which contrast sadly the cold oblivious indifference of modern 

 generations. If a conqueror may have added a province to his 

 empire, twenty centuries ago, we all know his name. Know we 

 as well that Hawkins and Drake made the pacific conquest of the 

 plant which Parmentier afterwards cultivated and spread abroad ? 



"Surely if the conqueror is a hero, Hawkins, Drake, Parmentier 

 are the benefactors of the human race. 



"Our most useful animals are not natives of the soil of which 



[Am. Inst.] N 



