GOVERNMENT POLICY OF PLANT INTRODUCTION 37 



Many thousands of cards systematically arranged compose this 

 history of the National work of Plant Introduction, and every 

 year the entries multiply with increasing rapidity. This spring 

 the number of distributions will total in the neighborhood of 40,000. 



To deal with plants without the aid of photographs very early 

 appealed to us as quite an impossibility and a photographic atelier 

 was established for the sole purpose of keeping a photographic 

 record of the new plants and their behavior. Ten thousand photo- 

 graphs are the result and I doubt if anywhere in the world there 

 can be found so great a range of horticultural photographs, both 

 of this and of foreign countries. 'Tis a motley collection, it is true, 

 but it records each advance made in the development of every 

 new plant industry with which we have been working. There is 

 no single factor in the problem of plant introduction which compares 

 with the new factor of the photograph. To be able to show a 

 photograph of a new fruit or vegetable or forage crop is the first 

 step toward interesting a stranger in it and no amount of word 

 picturing can convey a clear idea of a strange new plant. 



To propagate quickly and from all sorts of budwood the new 

 plants and get up a stock for sending out to experimenters has 

 required the building up of two special propagating gardens which 

 in themselves are remarkable affairs and represent a mass of accu- 

 mulated nursery experience with a very wide range of new plants 

 and an acquaintance with their idiosyncrasies. Old methods of 

 propagation have been adapted to new problems and the inarch- 

 ing of seedlings scarcely out of the seed-leaf stage has shortened 

 the long wait from planting to fruiting. The asexual propagation 

 of a new forage plant like alfalfa has made it possible for Mr. 

 Meyer, our explorer, to dig up rare species from southern Russia 

 and Turkestan, which he discovered in the winter, and have ready 

 a stock for field trial or hybridization in the spring. 



The general knowledge of the agriculture of other countries 

 which the explorers sent out for seeds and plants have acquired 

 and communicated to their colleagues has contributed no small 

 part to the development of the great investigating force of the 

 Department of Agriculture. The seed collection of the Office 

 which is growing at the rate of a thousand or two specimens each 

 year in which a representative of every seed shipment received is 



