LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 59 



silk worms and eggs and mulberry cuttings, 

 and Jefferson, as minister to France in 1785, 

 sent seeds of various grasses and olives and 

 peppers. It was he who started experiments 

 in rice culture in the Carolinas, an industry 

 which was later destined to produce the finest 

 rice in the world, from a fine strain of old- 

 world plants of which he dispatched a hand- 

 ful of seed. 



Under John Quincy Adams instructions 

 were sent to all consuls at foreign ports to 

 gather rare seeds and plants, to be distributed 

 through the office of the Commissioner of 

 Patents among agricultural societies, and a 

 horticultural park was established in Wash- 

 ington our first experiment station. So even 

 at that remote period, when the loom, the spin- 

 ning wheel and the soap kettle seemed forever 

 established as domestic necessities when land 

 and the products of land were so bounteous 

 that the people had no conception of their 

 ultimate extent even in those days the 

 founders were already looking forward and 

 preparing for the economic problems that 

 would confront their descendants. How re- 

 mote the time would be when their people 

 would be in want for lack of land and the 



