INVENTORY OF SEEDS AND PLANTS IMPORTED BY 

 THE OFFICE OF FOREIGN SEED AND PLANT IN- 

 TRODUCTION DURING THE PERIOD FROM APRIL 

 1 TO JUNE 30, 1922 (NO. 71; NOS. 54969 TO 55568). 



INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. 



The migrations of cultivated plants are slow when compared with 

 the spread of ideas or inventions, but it would surprise anyone who 

 has not paid much attention to the subject to learn of the steady flow 

 of new varieties which is going on from the old to the new countries. 

 This inventory represents the stream which is reaching America 

 through the carefully supervised Government channel. 



As we look over the immigrants which have arrived during the 

 last three months we are struck with the fact that most of those 

 which are coming in will require a long period of acclimatization, 

 and many of tl^em will need to be bred with those varieties which 

 we already have before they will prove their full value to the country. 

 Just as the human immigrants who arrive at Ellis Island are amal- 

 gamating slowly but surely with those who came years, ago, so these 

 plant immigrants, many of them at least, will be known by the par- 

 ticular characters which they have contributed to the cultivated 

 plants already here to which they are related; for, like all other 

 living things, the cultivated plants on which we subsist are continu- 

 ally changing under the hands of the plant breeders and through the 

 unconscious process of selection which is always going on. 



The fact that these plants which are introduced need to be se- 

 lected and bred simply emphasizes the lamentable circumstance that 

 there are too few plant breeders in America and too little encourage- 

 ment is given to those few to carry on this painstaking long-time 

 work of breeding and selecting plants. 



The general public has scarcely begun to realize the self-sacrifice 

 and lifelong devotion to its study which the successful plant breeder 

 must give to any plant before he brings about any permanent im- 

 provement in it or the ease with which years of effort may be wiped 

 out in a single season of unfortunate occurrences. Neither has the 

 public appreciated that the emoluments which come to the plant 

 breeder are rarely sufficient to cover even the expenses of cultiva- 

 tion and the care which the plants have required, so that at the end 

 of a life of devotion to this work the breeder often finds himself im- 

 poverished by the expenses of the upkeep of his collections. It is this 

 condition more than any other which is retarding the development 

 of our cultivated plants to-day, and it is a condition which should be 

 remedied. 



