OCTOBEE 30, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



613 



and that his book would now be the mag- 

 num opus of economic botany. 



De Candolle, as we have seen, includes 

 but 247 cultivated species in his work. 

 This is approximately the number gener- 

 ally thought to minister to the alimentary 

 wants of man. Sturtevant, in his notes on 

 edible plants, enumerates 1,113 domesti- 

 cated species now cultivated, and a total 

 of 4,447 species, some part or parts of which 

 are edible. Following De Candolle, Sturte- 

 vant made use of botany, archeology, pale- 

 ontology, history and philology in obtain- 

 ing his data. He searched the literature of 

 the world from the earliest records in 

 Egyptian, Chinese and Phoenician until the 

 time of his death to make a complete rec- 

 ord of the edible plants of the world. 

 Sturtevant 's were the species, too, of a 

 generation ago, many of which have since 

 been divided twice, thrice or oftener by 

 later botanists. It is said that no food plant 

 of established field culture has ever gone 

 out of cultivation, an approximate truth, 

 at least, from which we may presume that 

 the number of cultivated plants is not 

 smaller than the numbers given from our 

 author's notes. 



In leaving this phase of my subject, I 

 can not but say that, despite the fulness of 

 Sturtevant 's notes, the feeling comes in 

 reading them, as it does in reading De 

 Candolle, Darwin or whoever has written 

 on the domestication of plants, that what 

 has so far been found out is so little in 

 comparison to what we ought to know re- 

 garding the modification of cultivated 

 plants by man, that our present knowledge 

 but makes more apparent the dire poverty 

 of our information. 



Passing now to a more direct discussion 

 of the subject in hand, I have to say that I 

 have chosen to discuss three general means 

 of developing the latent possibilities in the 

 plant-kingdom for agriculture. It may 



help to hold your attention if I discuss 

 these in order of their importance — the 

 most important last. They are : First, the 

 domestication of the native plants of any 

 region. Second, better distribution of 

 plants now cultivated. Third, the utiliza- 

 tion of hybridization to bring into being 

 new types of plants better suited to culti- 

 vation and to the uses of man. 



In the matter of domesticating plants let 

 us glance hastily at what has and what can 

 be done in our own country. In De Can- 

 dolle 's treatise we make but a poor show- 

 ing, indeed. Out of his 247 cultivated spe- 

 cies but 45 are accredited to the New World 

 and but three of these — ^the pumpkin, Jeru- 

 salem artichoke and persimmon — come from 

 North America. To these three Sturte- 

 vant adds about thirty. The poor showing 

 made by our continent in furnishing food 

 plants, it must be made plain, is not due to 

 original inferiority. The number would be 

 vastly greater, as Asa Gray long ago 

 pointed out, had civilization begun in this 

 rather than in the Old World. It is prob- 

 able, indeed, that the numbers would be 

 approximately equal if civilization had be- 

 gun as early in the Western as in the East- 

 em Hemisphere. 



What are some of these plants that Gray 

 and other botanists have so often told us 

 might have been and may yet profitably 

 be domesticated? The list is far too long 

 to catalogue, but you will permit me time 

 for a few examples, choosing those that are 

 still worth domesticating for some special 

 purpose or environment. Fruits give us 

 most examples. 



Wild fruits abound in North America. 

 The continent is a natural orchard. More 

 than 200 species of tree, bush, vine and 

 small fruits were commonly used by the 

 aborigines for food, not counting nuts, 

 those occasionally used, and numerous 

 rarities. In its plums, grapes, raspberries, 



