220 



111 his socond meuiuir Liiissi-r (iSiU)) begins by showing that many 

 well-recognized facts liave been found which harmonize with the 

 conclusions at which he had previously arrived. Thus, in the tiri-t 

 and second halves of the eighteenth century the northern limit of the 

 cultivation of grain had not passed beyond latitude 60° 30' X., a::(l 

 many unsuccessful attempts had been made to ri^^en the grains in 

 more northern regions; but in 1829 Erman found a small successful 

 beginning going on at Yakutsk, and since then it has spread in all 

 directions and has extended to barley, oats, rye, and wheat. Similarly 

 in Lapland the cultivation of grain succeeded only for a long time in 

 the southern regions, but now it extends to the north and even 

 among the mountains. In Lapland this cultivation succeeded only 

 when the seed w^as brought from near by, not from a distance, and 

 Von Baer says that it was commonly said that the grain had accli- 

 matized itself, or, as he expresses it, " It seems to me that gradually 

 a quick-ripening variety or ' sport ' has developed that is not injured 

 hj the early frosts of summer nights." 



F. C. Schiibeler (1862) in his memoir on the cultivated plants of 

 Norway states that in 1852 the seed of yellow^ maize brought to Nor- 

 W'ay from Hohenheim, near Stuttgart, was sown on the 26th of May 

 and reaped one hundred and twenty days later, but after continued 

 annual cultivations, in which every harvest came a little earlier than 

 its predecessor, Schiibeler, in 1857, sowed the seed on May 25 and har- 

 vested it in ninety days, while the seed of the sa«ie variety brought 

 fresh from Breslau and sowed on the same date ripened only after 

 one hundred and tw^enty-two days. Even Kalm had remarked that 

 maize when transported from a southern to a northern latitude 

 gradually overcomes the difficulty of ripening and eventually gives a 

 nearly constant variety of grain. 



Morren, in the Belgique Ilorticole (1859-60), says the principal 

 problem to be resolved in Xorway in the amelioration of its agricul- 

 ture is the introduction of new varieties and the development of 

 precocity. This precocity increases year b}^ year, as if the plant could 

 not all of a sudden obey the new climatic influences under which it 

 had been brought. Plants cultivated many years in succession under 

 a northern climate when transported to a southern climate preserve 

 something of their former rate of development and are more preco- 

 cious than plants of the same species that have remained in their first 

 situation. Just as wdieat carried from Germany northward into the 

 Baltic Provinces of Russia fails to ripen its grain, so grain carried 

 from the valleys up to the highlands in Switzerland fails to ripen. 



Bastian quotes an old English author Avho says that in the accli- 

 matization of plants the graduation of the process is the principal 

 necessity, and that a sudden acclimatization in a new home is impos- 

 sible, so that a plant gradually learns to live in a climate in which 



