74 HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



man to undertake. The only way in which it might possibly 

 occur is by some great mutation but so far, out of many in- 

 stances, as in the case of the apple, raspberry, grape, alfalfa and 

 clover, no noteworthy progress has been made in making plants 

 hardier by selection from tender stock. The occasional test win- 

 ters, such as that of February, 1899, in which millions of dol- 

 lars' worth of alfalfa were destroyed, indicate that it is not 

 feasible to get hardy plants by selection from tender plants. In 

 each and every case it is starting on a work that may take many 

 thousands of years for completion, and the test winters may 

 compel us to begin all over again. Nature takes a century of 

 centuries for some experiments. Let us leave such work to her. 

 But, you may ask, how may we get hardiness into tender 

 plants? I look upon hardiness as something easily transmitted 

 in crossing and I am working extensively along this line in my 

 work of raising seedlings of native northwestern fruits by the 

 hundreds of thousands. Hardiness may turn out to be a unit 

 character obeying Mendel's law of heredity. In plants, such as 

 plums and apples, which are propagated by some mode of divi- 

 sion of the original plant such as budding or grafting, we will 

 not need to go further than to secure the original hybrid that 

 has the characters we desire. But this line of thought is not 

 within the scope of this Conference, as we are discussing ac- 

 climatization and not hybridization. 



The President The paper is now open for discussion. 



Mr. Siebrecht I wish to say that as a boy and a young man, very 

 often I grew Indian corn in the University in Germany, from English 

 corn. There were thirty varieties that were adapted. That was in 

 northern Germany, in Hanover. 



The President I think that this challenge from Dr. Hansen about 

 this law means that no annual is admissible as an illustration. Dr. 

 Hansen himself has spoken about the Indian corn. Indian corn does not 

 bear at all upon it. It must be something that can bear through the 

 winter, so when he spoke of this law, I Said to myself, there are a 

 thousand illustrations, but as I thought of it, I realized that no annual 

 counts, because an annual does not bear through the winter, and no 

 hybrid counts. And so when you eliminate the hybrids, it is the kind of 

 law which you cannot meet, because you are always uncertain of your 

 ground. While he spoke I thought of Indian corn, and I thought of a 

 score of things, but they are not admissible. Now, let us see what we can 



