IMPORTANCE OP PLANT INTEODUCTION 



75 



and resulted in the importation of a number of 

 varieties of this valuable plant to serve as experi- 

 mental material for his researches. Mr. Eolfs also 



Fig. 98. The true Corsican citron. An Amerioan-Brown fruit 

 from the only paying plantation of this fruit yet estab- 

 lished in America, that of Dr. Westlake, of Los An£eles. 

 The clone were secured for the Division of Pomology by 

 David Fairchild, his first piece of plant-introduction work. 



made a trip to Jamaica to study the cassava in- 

 dustry, and there made a collection of cassava 

 varieties which is now established in Florida. 



A short investigation of the Alpine trial gardens 

 of Austria was made last summer by Mr. Edgar 

 Brown, who also secured for trial the Ladino clover 

 of the irrigated valley of the Po. At the present 

 time Mr. Frank N. Meyer, agricultural explorer of 

 the Office, is in northern China, and from this 

 region he is sending, week by week, cions and seeds 

 of hardy fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains and orna- 

 mental plants that may be expected to have, an 

 important bearing on the agricultural industries of 

 the Atlantic and middle western states. 



The government responsibility in plant introduction. 



It will be evident from what has been said that 

 the aims of this Office are not at all identical with 

 those of such a wonderful botanic garden as that 

 of Kew, Berlin, or New York. It does not main- 

 tain a collection of living plants, whether of 

 practical value or not, but its funds are spent in 

 importing for the use of experimenters throughout 

 the country material with which they can work. 

 Scarcely a day passes without some request being 

 received for seed which is not carried by any seeds- 

 man in the country. A potato-breeder in Vermont 

 wants the new Solanum Gommersonii from the wet 

 lands in Uruguay to hybridize with the ordinary 

 potato ; a settler in southern Texas wants to try 

 bamboos on the Rio Grande ; the representative of 

 a land-development company on the Sacramento 



wants to plant the Egyptian horse-bean for a green- 

 manure crop; the Experiment Station of Hawaii 

 wants wine-grape varieties introduced into the 

 islands; and the director of the Alaska Experiment 

 Station asks for North Swedish grains and vege- 

 tables for the Klondyke. 



The government enterprise of plant introduction 

 should not interfere with the private seed trade, 

 but, on the contrary, benefit it, for its object is to 

 create a demand which the seedsmen will supply. 

 Seedsmen have kept on their catalogues for years 

 certain species for which the demand is so small 

 that it does not pay to handle them, and yet some 

 of them are worthy of wide cultivation in this 

 country. Government plant introduction brings 

 these to public attention. Had the work of intro- 

 ducing new fai.m and garden plants been a profi- 

 table one, there would certainly be in this and other 

 countries commercial firms with their collectors in 

 all parts of the globe, as there are rug- and tea- 

 importers ; yet it is safe to say that there is no 

 private concern in America that would undertake 

 to get at moderate expense the Manchurian millet 

 through iields of which the Japanese soldiers 

 marched in the recent Russo-Japanese war, nor 

 would it have thought it profitable to supply the 

 Canadian wheat experimenter with the early-ripen- 

 ing wheat from the Ladoga sea from which one 

 of the best wheats for the Northwest has been 

 originated. 



Experimental work is expensive, and it is only 

 when the first stages in the experiment have been 



Fig. 99. The Carob bean, or St. John's Bread, of the Meditena- 

 Jiean. Pod of a fodder-producing tree. ( Oeratonia SiUgua.) 



passed — when a demand has grown up for the seeds 

 — that there is money in keeping in stock a supply 

 for this demand. Understanding this point fully. 



