ACCLIMATING PLANTS. 77 



climate, bat this is merely an accidental test of its endurance, and 

 entirely distinct from what is commonly understood by acclima- 

 tion. No one should suppose that time will produce a physiolog- 

 ical or constitutional change in a plant. All the acclimation we 

 can ever arrive at we must produce by the sowing of seeds, hy- 

 bridized by the hand of man, or naturally cross-fertilized by in- 

 sects or the air. Seeds produce a new being, and it comes down 

 to this, that if we wish to acclimate we must do it by producing 

 this new being. Some of our most tender fruits are from cold 

 regions ; the Black Tartarian, one of the tenderest cherries, for 

 instance, came from the Crimea, while plants from warmer climates 

 sometimes prove hardy here. He had tried experiments in accli- 

 mating plants at the expense of thousands of dollars, but without 

 success. 



Dr. Waters said it was hardlj' to be expected that the character 

 of plants could be changed more easily than that of animals. They 

 both begin life with certain tendencies, the development of which 

 may be retarded or accelerated. In the first volume of the 

 " Transactions of the London Horticultural Society," is an account 

 by Sir Joseph Banks, of a successful attempt to acclimate the 

 Zizania aqvatica in England. The seed was procured from Can- 

 ada, in 1791, and sown in a pond where it produced strong plants, 

 which ripened their seeds. These seeds A^egetated the next siDriug, 

 but the plants produced were weak, slender, not half so tall as 

 those of the first generation, and grew only in the shallowest 

 water. The seeds of these plants produced others the next year 

 sensibly stronger than their parents of the second year. In this 

 manner they proceeded, springing up every year from the seeds of 

 the preceding ; every year becoming visibly stronger and larger, 

 and rising from deeper parts of the pond, until 1804, when several 

 of the plants were six feet in height, and the whole pond was 

 covered thicklj'^ with them. In most cases where valuable results 

 have been secured in the way of acclimation, they have been acci- 

 dental. In England they do not attempt to produce Indian corn 

 from their own seed. There they have a large amount of yellow 

 rays, and the result is a great deal of coarse cell growth. If we 

 attempt too much in the way of improvement there will not be 

 time to develop seed from plants whose qualities were given in a 

 climate with a long even season ; the season with us is not long 

 enough, and consequently, while the germ and cotyledons mature, 



