XVIII.] ADAPTATION TO CONDITIONS. 319 



seedliugs of them will be still better adapted to those 

 conditions, as a whole, and this must be the opinion 

 of many of the fruit growers of the northwest, else 

 the talk about promising seedlings of Duchess and 

 other families is meaningless. Already the McMahan, 

 Wolf River, Pewaukee, Northwestern Greening and 

 others are great blessings to the northwest. I look 

 for the time when the present imported fruits and 

 crabs will be superseded by their own progeny in 

 the same way that the lists of Coxe and other early 

 writers have been supplanted.^ Already the tide has 

 set in which shall submerge them. I therefore re- 

 gard the Russian importations to be of benefit to 

 our horticulture, but I look upon them as a means 

 rather than as an end. The history of our horticul- 

 ture everywhere emphasizes the probability of a sec- 

 ondary and more important outcome. 



The conclusion of the whole matter, as it now 

 lies in my mind, is this: American fruits constantly 

 tend to diverge from the foreign types which were 

 their parents, and they are, as a rule, better adapted 

 to our environments than foreign varieties are. In 

 less than a century we have departed widely from 

 the imported varieties which gave us a start. At the 

 expiration, of another century we should stand upon 

 a basis which is nearly, if not wholly, American. 



