ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF VEGETABLE RACES. 4Yl 



have American constitutions, adapted to the American climate 

 and therefore not likely to mildew. The same thing is true of the 

 foreign grape. Millions of roots of the foreign grape have, first 

 and last, been planted in the United States. Hardly one can be 

 pointed to that actually " succeeds " in the open-air culture not 

 from want of heat or light for we have the greatest abundance of 

 both ; but from the want of constitutional adaptation. And still 

 the foreign grape is abandoned, except for vineries, without a fair 

 trial of the only modes by which it would naturally be hoped to.ac- 

 climate it, viz. raising seedlings here, and crossing it with our best 

 native sorts. 



Every person interested in horticulture, must stumble upon facts 

 almost daily, that teach us how much may be done by a new race 

 or generation, in plants as well as men, that it is utterly out of the 

 question for the old race to accomplish. Compare, in the Western 

 States, the success of a colony of foreign emigrants in subduing the 

 wilderness and mastering the land, with that of another company 

 of our own race say of New Englanders. The one has to contend 

 with all his old-world prejudices, habits of labor, modes of working ; 

 the other being " to the manor born," <kc., seizes the Yankee axe, 

 and the forest, for the first time, acknowledges its master. While 

 the old-countryman is endeavoring to settle himself snugly, and 

 make a little neighborhood comfortable, the American husbandman 

 has cleared and harvested a whole state. 



As in the man so in the plant. A race should be adapted to 

 the soil by being produced upon it, of the best pos&ible materials. 

 The latter is as indispensable as the first as it will not wholly suffice 

 that a man or a tree should be indigenous or our American In- 

 dians, or our Chickasaw Plums, would never have given place to 

 either the Caucasian race, or the luscious " Jefferson ;" but the 

 best race being taken at the starting point, the highest utility and 

 beauty will be found to spring from individuals adapted by birth, 

 constitution, and education, to the country. Among a thousand na- 

 tive Americans, there may be nine hundred no better suited to labor 

 of the body or brains, than so many Europeans but there will be 

 five or ten that will reach a higher level of adaptation, or to use a 



