98 HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



hundreds, of local conditions requiring varieties of wheat spe- 

 cifically adapted to the respective conditions. Even in straw- 

 berries, where a variety like the Wilson may be successfully 

 grown in twenty or thirty States, the work of the plant breeder 

 is proving that the profits come from varieties adapted to spe- 

 cial regions. All along the line our cereal, cotton and other field 

 crops, some of which yield hundreds of millions of dollars ; our 

 fruit and vegetable crops, also representing vast sums of wealth, 

 and even some of our forest crops, are ready to be made over 

 to suit each local soil, climate, system of agriculture and market. 



Until recently much of the plant breeding was done by 

 amateurs. There was no organization to emphasize the greater 

 importance of new values in crops representing immense wealth, 

 and there was little systematic thought concerning the organiza- 

 tion of our American plant breeding as an establishment of 

 mighty import to our nation. The two first American common- 

 wealths to begin the organization of State plant-breeding es- 

 tablishments were Ontario and Minnesota. Each of these States 

 can show for the expenditure of forty or fifty thousand dol- 

 lars in breeding field crops, products directly traceable to the 

 work of plant improvement of forty or fifty million dollars. In 

 no other of America's largest economic enterprises is there op- 

 portunity to make public funds so productive as in the improve- 

 ment of our economic plants. Along some of the lines of least 

 resistance in which improvements can easiest be made in crops 

 of largest value, a dollar can be made to earn a thousand dollars 

 and even in rare cases a million. It seems a fair and conserva- 

 tive estimate to state that our $3,000,000,000 worth of annual 

 plant products can be changed by breeding alone into $3,300- 

 000,000, at a cost of less than $3,000,000, one dollar earning on 

 the average more than $100. Those who have had most ex- 

 perience in this line believe that the present organization of this 

 work could be enlarged in ten years so as to be on the basis of 

 expenditure and results last mentioned. 



The breeding of corn throughout the upper Mississippi Val- 

 ley, and for that matter throughout the entire United States, 

 illustrates what is needed in the breeding of all our economic 

 plants. Men in every State, in every group of agricultural 



