140 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



understood ; and the fruit-raiser and stock-raiser take advantage 

 of it to improve their products. 



This tendency to variation is seen most strongly manifested in 

 those animals and plants most useful to man for their products 

 or for their beauty. It may be said they are useful because they 

 vary, and this is true ; but they were first cultivated for their 

 own sake as distinct kinds ; when it was found they varied they 

 became more valuable from that fact. Now, by the production 

 of varieties, the useful plants can be cultivated with success and 

 profit over a much greater extent of territory than any one 

 distinct kind could be. What variety of corn could possibly 

 combine in itself such qualities that it should be fitted alike for 

 Canada and Texas, for New England and Illinois ? But because 

 the corn produces varieties, kinds can be selected fitted to every 

 State in the Union. The potato is another example. New vari- 

 eties are originated almost every year — some early, some late — 

 and thus the cultivation of this useful plant is extended over 

 more of the earth than any one kind possibly could be. Need I 

 enumerate our fruit trees and vines, and show how new vari- 

 eties are produced, fitted to peculiar climates, and gratifying the 

 enlarged desires of civilized man. Nature has given us, in the 

 seeds of these plants, unbounded possibilities. We have the 

 best fruit now known, but in the seeds of the applesj and pears, 

 and grapes that have matured this year, there may be the germ 

 of a better apple, or pear, or grape than we have ever seen. 

 And this shall be true forever. When the fruits are gathered 

 their seeds may give us better kinds — more hardy and more 

 delicious to the taste. How perfectly the nature of these plants 

 is adapted to the nature of man. He is capable of unlimited 

 improvement — so arc the plants most useful to man. While 

 there is this uncertainty in the seed of fruits, there is certainty 

 in the bud. To the seed there has been given the power of 

 producing new varieties, and in the bud is found the means of 

 propagating any variety that is desired. We see the same ten- 

 dency to variation among the plants that are simply ornamental. 

 In some of them, as in the rose and dahlia, their beauty is often 

 increased by doubling ; and when the plant is perfectly double 

 it can no longer produce seed. But nature never allows any 

 plant to become so double as to lose the power of producing 

 eeed, unless she has provided some other method for its propa- 



