20 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXI. Na 519 



SCIENCE: 



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RECENT PROGRESS IN AMERICAN HORTICULTURE.' 



BY L. H. BAILEY, rTHACA, N.Y. 



You have asked me to say something about recent progress in 

 horticulture. I am at a loss to know how you want the subject 

 treated. The subject is a large one, and can he approached in 

 many ways. It is by no means admitted that there is any recent 

 progress. There is a large class of our horticultural public which 

 disparages these modern times as in no way so good as those of 

 sevreral or many years ago. These men are mostly gardeners who 

 were apprenticed in their youth. There is another class which 

 decries the introduction of new varieties of plants, thinking 

 these novelties to he unreliable and deceitful. There are others 

 who are content with the older things and who have never had 

 occasion to ask if there has been any progress in recent years. 

 Others have looked for progress, but have not found it. A pro- 

 fessor of horticulture told me a few days ago that nothing new 

 nor interesting seems to be transpiring in the horticultural world. 

 Some people even deny outright that any progress is making at. 

 the present time. On the other hand, there are some, perhaps the 

 minority, who contend that they see great advancement. Perhaps 

 these are mostly young men. Then there are the catalogues with 

 their fascinating impossibilities, pregnant with the glory that is 

 to come. Between all these diversities, where is the young man 

 to stand who loves plants and sunshine and is yet ambition?? Is 

 there any progress in horticulture ? If not, it is dead, uninspiring. 

 We cannot live on the past, good as it is; we must draw our in- 

 spiration from the future. This subject is of vital personal inter- 

 est to me ; it must be so to you. 



I cannot forego ihe satisfaction of saying at the outset, that 

 some of this supposed stagnation must be due to blindness on the 

 part of the observer. The apprenticed gardener underwent in his 

 youth the stupendous misfortune of having learned the art and 

 science of horticulture. The apprentice system, in itself, does not 

 often educate a man; that is, it does not make him a student. 

 It teaches him to base the whole art upon rule, personal experi- 

 ence and "authority;" it is apt to make him a narrow man, and 

 he may not readily assimilate novel methods. Those who have 

 looked for progress and have not found it, may have looked in 

 the wrong place. It is possible that they do not understand very 

 clearly just what progress is. Those who are simply indifferent 

 exert little influence upon our inquiry and may be omitted. Those 

 who see progress upon all sides may be over-sanguine. Perhaps 

 they project something of their own passion into their statements. 

 And the catalogues, being for the most part editorial rather than 

 horticultural productions, may be liberally discounted as evidence. 

 It is apparent, therefore, that we must make an independent In- 

 quiry if we are to answer our own question. Several considera- 



' Read before the Agricultural and Experimental Union of Ontario, at the 

 On'.arlo .Agricultural CoUege, Guelph, Dec. 53, 1892. 



tions incline me to believe that progress is not only making, but 

 that it is making very rapidly. And I may say here that I care 

 little for any facts or illustrations of progress merely as facts. 

 There must be some law, some tendency, some profound move- 

 ment underlying it all, and this we must discover. I shall not 

 attempt, therefore, to indicate how great the progress has been in 

 any definite time, but endeavor to ascertain if there is progression 

 which gains impetus with the years. 



I. There is a progressive variation in plants. Horticulture is 

 the science of cultivation of plants. The plant is the beginning 

 and the end. For the plant we till the soil, build green-houses, 

 and transact the business of the garden. All progress, therefore, 

 rests upon the possibility of securing better varieties, those pos- 

 sessing greater intrinsic merit in themselves or better adaptations 

 to certain purposes or i-egions. In other words, all progress rests 

 upon the fact that evolution is still operative, that garden plants, 

 like wild animals and plants, are more or less constantly under- 

 going modification. American horticulture may be said to have 

 begun with the opening of the century. It was in 1806 that Ber- 

 nard M'.Mahon wrote his " American Gardener's Calendar." This 

 work contains a catalogue of 3,700 "species and varieties of the 

 most valuable and curious plants hitherto discovered." Among 

 the cultivated varieties of fruits and vegetables, the present 

 reader will see few familiar names. He will observe among the 

 fruits, however, some American types, showing that even at that 

 date American pomology had begun to diverge from the English 

 and French which gave it birth. This is especially true of the 

 apples, for of the fifty-nine kinds in the catalogue about 66 per 

 cent are of American origin. Several nurseries were established 

 in the next thirty years and fresh importations of European 

 varieties were made, so that when Downing, in 1845, described 

 the 190 apples known to be growing in this country, American 

 varieties had fallen to 52 per cent. In 1872, however, when almost 

 2,000 varieties were described in Downing's second revision, the 

 American kinds had risen to 65 or more per cent, or to about the 

 proportion which they occupied at the opening of the century. 

 At the present time, the per cent of varieties of American origin 

 is much higher, and if we omit from our calculations the obsolete 

 varieties, we find that over 80 per cent of the apples actually cul- 

 tivated in the older apple regions at the present time are of 

 American origin. The percentage of native varieties, in other 

 words, has risen from nothing to 80 per cent since the apple set- 

 tlement of the country, and at least once d uring this time the 

 native productions have recovered from an overwhelming on- 

 slaught of foreigners. Except in the cold north and north-west 

 where the apple industry is now experiencing an immigration not 

 unlike that which befell the older States early in the century, few 

 people would think of importing varieties of apples with the ex- 

 pectation that they would prove to be a commercial success in 

 America. Other plants have shown most astounding develop- 

 ment. In 1889, 39 varieties of chrysanthemums were introduced 

 in North America ; in 1890, 57 varieties; and in 1891, 131 varieties. 

 The chrysanthemum is now the princess of flowers, yet in 1806 

 M'Mahou barely mentioned it, and there were no named varieties. 

 All this is evidence of the greatest and most substantial progress, 

 and much of it is recent; and there is every reason to believe that 

 this rapid adaptation of plants to new conditions is still in progress 

 in all cultivated species. In fact, the initial and conspicuous 

 stage of such adaptation is just now taking place in the Russian 

 apples in America, in which the American seedlings are even now 

 gaining a greater prominence than some of their parents. Both 

 the parent stock and the seedling brood are radical and progressive 

 departures of recent date. The same modification to suit Ameri- 

 can environments is seen in every plant which has been cultivated 

 here for a score or more of, years. The mulberries are striking 

 examples, for our fruit-bearing varieties are not only different 

 from those of Europe, whence they came, but many of them be- 

 long to a species which in Europe is not esteemed for fruit. The 

 European varieties of almonds are now being superceded in Cali- 

 fornia by native seedlings which are said to be much better 

 adapted to our Pacific climate than their recent progenitors. 

 These facts of rapid adaptation are everywhere so patent upon 

 reflection that I need not consider them further at this time. They 



