44 FLORA OF MICHIGAN. 



currants have descended from a small red currant found in Europe which 

 is thought to be identical with one found in wet places in northern 

 Michigan. 



Although the improvements in fruits have been much greater during 

 the past two hundred or three hundred years, than during any correspond- 

 ing period of the world's history, we cannot help wondering what grand 

 results might have been attained had these experiments been continued in 

 North America through 2,000-4,000 years. 



The advantages of experimenting with native instead of with foreign 

 plants is shown by the mere fact that they are already adapted to our 

 climate. Much time has been lost in making unsuccessful attempts to 

 acclimatize or to improve foreign fruits. 



We know of no attempts in this country to raise seedlings by tens of 

 thousands such as could now be well undertaken by almost any of our 

 experiment stations. The great increase of numbers would increase the 

 probability of sooner obtaining the improvements sought for. In case of 

 apples, pears and quinces this subject has received too little attention, but 

 with strawberries and some of the others requiring little time for finding 

 the results, more experiments have been made. The often repeated rec- 

 ommendations of the late President Wilder in his addresses to members of 

 the American Pomological Society were: "Plant the most mature and 

 perfect seeds of the most hardy, vigorous and valuable varieties; and as a 

 shorter process, ensuring more certain and happy results, cross or hybridize 

 your best fruits." 



In this connection, we consider ourselves very fortunate in being able to 

 reproduce portions of a most admirable essay which appeared in the pro- 

 ceedings of the American Pomological Society in 1873. It was written by 

 the late Dr. Asa Gray and has been greatly admired by the comparatively 

 small number ifijio have read it: 



'" It would be curious to speculate" as to what our pomology would have 

 been if the civilization from which it, and we ourselves, have sprung, had 

 had its birthplace along the southern shores of our great lakes, the north- 

 ern shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and the intervening Mississippi, instead 

 of the Levant, Mesopotamia and the Nile, and our old world had been 

 open to us as a new world, less than four hundred years old. 



" Seemingly, we should not have as great a variety of choice fruits as 

 we have now, and they would mostly have been different, but probably 

 neither scanty nor poor. In grapes at least we should have been gainers. 

 Our five or six available species, of which we are now just beginning to 

 know the capabilities, would have given us at least as many choice sorts 

 and as wide a diversity as we now have of pears; while pears would be a 

 recent acquisition, somewhat as our American grapes now are. Our apples 

 would have been developed from Pyrus coronaria, and might have 

 equaled anything we actually possess from Pyrus malus in flavor though 

 perhaps not in variety, if it be true, as Karl Koch supposes, that the 

 apples of the orchards are from three or four species. At least one of our 

 hawthorns, Cratcegus tomentosa, in some varieties, bears a large and deli- 

 cately flavored fruit, evidently capable of increase in size; it might have 

 been in the front rank of pomaceous fruits. In a smaller way our service- 

 berry would have been turned to good account; our plums would have 

 been the progeny of the Chicasa, the beach plum, and our wild red and 

 yellow Prunus Americana, which have already shown great capacity for 

 improvement; our cherries might have been as well flavored, but probably 



