ally produced in America — they are at best but one short remove 
from the old Rosa indica blood, and practically none of the everbloom- 
ing roses of the day have had bred into them any purely American 
native species. 
Those who have had their eyes fixed on the native flora of America 
have long ago come to realize that here, as in other lands, the things 
persist and become established that inure themselves to our particu- 
lar climatic conditions. Practically all of our great trees, our notable 
plants, our valuable shrubs, are survivals of this process of adaptabil- 
ity. When exotics are brought from a land of less arduous climatic 
range, their endurance is always problematic, at least until they have 
had opportunity to run the gauntlet of enemies as to weather, dis- 
ease and insect life. 
A painfully familiar example is the much-planted Norway spruce, 
which may be found in mournful decrepitude in thousands of American 
parks and home-grounds which it ought to be adorning in full vigor. 
In its youth this spruce is of pleasing habit and rapid growth, but as 
it reaches age and size after a generation on the land, and its feeding 
power is diminished by competition or approaching maturity, it dis- 
closes its total inadaptability to the American climate. The reason 
has been determined for us by those who find that it came from middle 
Europe, where there is a climatic temperature range not much exceed- 
ing ICO degrees from the coldest winter to the warmest summer, while 
here we hardy Americans, who have not only survived but have flour- 
ished, must be as ready for 20 degrees below zero as we are for 120 de- 
grees above it, in the various seasons! The native pines and hem- 
locks, our own magnificent spruces and firs, have in the course of ages 
worked out their own climatic endurance, and there is therefore no 
necessity for planting and no wisdom in continuing to plant this exotic 
spruce, which becomes disheveled just when it should be dignified. 
Many other instances could be cited, but one is sufl&cient to point 
the importance of American plants for American conditions. Notably 
is this so in roses, for the rose is, after all, a world plant, and the 
Creator has endowed every arable area of this beautiful world with 
roses indigenous to that particular condition and therefore suggesting 
a basis for the evolution which has given us all our modern horticul- 
tural advantages. 
I have asked the editor of the Bulletin of the Garden Club of 
America for permission to present this situation to the women who 
have gardens and love roses. I have the hope that there will arise 
among these women those interested in rose hybridization who will 
take it up as a fascinating and fruitful pursuit, the result of which, 
should success come, could only be great good to mankind. 
II 
