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a cultivator plants his orchard or vineyard with a variety which he 

 supposes to be suited to certain purposes, only to find after years 

 of care that it is not true to name and is entirely worthless for his 

 use. With the immense number of closely related varieties differing 

 so slightly in superficial characters, this danger is really a great 

 one, and can only be minirnized by the maintenance of careful records 

 which shall at any time be available for reference. The mainte- 

 nance of a permanent card catalogue giving a record signed by the 

 recipient of each plant will, it is believed, be found an essential aid in 

 unraveling the x)roblenis sure to arise in the determination of varietal 

 names of plants from which labels have been lost or private records 

 destroyed. Such a catalogue will further enable the public at any time 

 to ascertain what has been introduced through the agency of the 

 Department, where it was tested, and, when followed up by reports 

 from the recii:>ieuts, what measure of success it met with. 



The need of an economic herbarium of varieties will be felt seriously 

 in connection with ijlant-introduction experiments, since the satisfac- 

 tory determination of such varieties from descriptions is almost impos- 

 sible, and the likelihood of duplicating importations is very great 

 unless means of identification are at hand. The whole matter of the 

 nomenclature of cultivated plants will have a direct bearing upon 

 introduction work. 



For many reasons, some of which have already been discussed, it is 

 fortunate that there is in every State an agricultural experiment 

 station, in whose permanent fields and orchards, under the sux)ervision 

 of trained specialists, imi:)orted plants can be grown and tested. Such 

 variety testing has already formed a part of the routine work of many 

 stations, and could a number of exotic varieties and wholly new food 

 plants be secured for trial the interest in such exj)eriments would pre- 

 sumably be further aroused. 



The building up of arboreta and collections of i)lants for breeding 

 I)urposcs at the various stations will, however, form an even more 

 valuable, and it is hoped more keenly appreciated, feature of the^ work. 

 The botanic gardens and i)ublic arboreta, of which there are already 

 in America some excellent types, in view of their great permanence, 

 corps of botanists, and apparatus for identification, will no doubt be 

 willing to receive and care for many exotic species, although in most 

 cases they would not wish to assume the burden of growing the 

 immense number of different varieties of cultivated plants which would 

 form such an important part of those introduced. 



But, as hinted at earlier in this bulletin, the cooperation of private 

 investigators and variety testers will necessarily be secured, since the 

 range of soil and climate covered by the public institutions is entirely 

 inadequate for the thorough exploiting of a new plant, and, further- 

 more, the many conditions of market, labor, profitable crop, and trans- 

 portation can not always be settled satisfiictorily by the experiment 

 station woriier. 



