October 30, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



615 



it is interesting to note that the pecan has 

 become within a few decades so important 

 a crop that optimistic growers predict in 

 another half century that pecan groves will 

 be second only to the cotton fields in the 

 south. A recent bulletin from the United 

 States Department of Agriculture de- 

 scribes 67 varieties, of which more than a 

 million and a half trees have been planted. 



It is doubtful whether we are to change 

 general agriculture much by the domesti- 

 cation at this late date of new native 

 grains, though many may well be intro- 

 duced from other regions and wonderful 

 improvement through plant-breeding is, as 

 all know, now taking place. Raw material 

 exists in America for domestication, but it 

 is not probable that we shall ever use it ex- 

 tensively. 



There are, however, a number of native 

 vegetables worth cultivating. The native 

 beans and teparies in the semi-arid and 

 sub-tropical southwest to which Freeman, 

 of the Arizona station, has called attention, 

 grown perhaps for thousands of years by 

 the aborigines, seem likely to prove timely 

 crops for the dry-farmers of the southwest. 

 Professor Freeman has isolated 70 distinct 

 types of these beans and teparies, suggest- 

 ing that many horticultural sorts may be 

 developed from his foundation stock. The 

 ground-nut, Apios tuberosa, furnished food 

 for the French at Port Royal in 1613 and 

 the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620, and as a 

 crop for forests might again be used. 

 There are a score or more species of Phy- 

 salis, or ground cherries, native to North 

 America, several of which are promising 

 vegetables and have been more or less used 

 by pioneers. Solanum nigrum, the night- 

 shade, a cosmopolite of America and Eu- 

 rope, recently much advertised under sev- 

 eral misleading names, and its congener, 

 Solanum triflorum, both really wild toma- 

 toes, are worthy of cultivation and in fact 



are readily yielding to improvement. 

 Amaranthus retroflexus, one of the common 

 pigweeds of gardens, according to Watson, 

 is cultivated for its seeds by the Arizona 

 Indians. In China and Japan the corms 

 or tubers of a species of Sagittaria are com- 

 monly sold for food. There are several 

 American species, one of which at least was 

 used wherever found by the Indians, and 

 under the name arrowhead, swan potato 

 and swamp potato has given welcome sus- 

 tenance to pioneers. Our native lotus, a 

 species of Nelumbo, was much prized by the 

 aborigines, seeds, roots and stalks being 

 eaten. Sagittaria and Nelumio furnish 

 starting points for valuable food plants for 

 countless numbers of acres of water-cov- 

 ered marshes when the need to utilize these 

 now waste places becomes pressing. 



The temptation is strong to continue this 

 discussion of the domestication of native 

 plants, but time demands that I pass to a 

 consideration of the second potential of an 

 increased diet, that of better distribution 

 of the world's food-producing plants. 



Beginning with the discovery of the New 

 World, botanical and agricultural explora- 

 tions have been carried on with zeal, and 

 food plants have been interchanged freely 

 between newly discovered lands and older 

 civilizations. Yet in these centuries the 

 food-plant floras of races have been changed 

 but little. Quite too often a crop is found 

 to be the monopoly of a race or nation irre- 

 spective of soil and climate, factors which 

 ought to impose a cultivated flora. It 

 would seem that agriculturists would 

 quickly adopt food plants grown elsewhere 

 of which the advantage is evident, and be 

 thereby diverted from the cultivation of 

 poorer crops in their own country. Yet 

 the introduction of foreign plants is usu- 

 ally arrested, if not actually opposed, by 

 the timidity of agriculture, and it has been 

 most difficult to introduce new crops into 



