81 
I am not quite satisfied with Mr. Reimer's 
ways. He has written me only one letter from 
Talent, in duplicate, and I enclose herewith one 
of them to you, to be filed. Then on September 
3d, in the evening, I received the following 
telegram: "Keyo-Seoul. F. N, Meyer iunerican 
Consulate Hanlcow retransmitted Kingmen arrive 
Hankow October 1. Letter follows. Reimer." 
He certainly ought to have written me from 
Japan aboiit his worK , for it is no small amount 
of time and funds we are spending in getting 
these pear seeds. 
As you see by his letter from Talent and his 
telegram from Chosen he must have changed his mind 
considerably while in Japan. 
Now in the meantime Mr. J. C. Huston has been 
transferred from Peking to Nanking and I hope 
young Mr. Tenney from our Legation at Peking can 
accompany Mr. Reimer to the Shing lung shan re- 
gion. I have written so to Mr. Reimer. 
I am not sure in how far he can rough it in 
this land and get what he wants. When he attends, 
however, to the collecting of seeds of Pyrus us- 
suriensis for the North, I am doing my share in 
getting seeds of the calleryana pear for the mild 
wintered sections of the United States. 
T got already over ^5 I^b. of clean seeds of 
a cultivated form of P. calleryana , called the 
"Chia fang li " or "Family" or "Tame crab-apple 
pear". And an American Missionary at Chikung shan, 
(extreme So. Honan, a mountainous resort near Sin 
tien, on the Peking-Hankow R. R.) is also collect- 
ing seeds for me. I suppose of this same domestic- 
ated fang li, although I told him distinctly I 
wanted the real wild one. I hope to hear from him 
almost any day, but mail takes 6 to 7 days from 
Hankow to here as the -hailroad is in disorder. 
I am somewhat in a dilemma here with these 
pear seeds; my former interpreter made the con- 
tract with some parties here and the understanding 
was that the wild pears ripened in early September. 
Now, hov/ever, we find that the cultivated type of 
calleryana pear ripens in this time and that the 
wild ones come 3 to 4 months later. Now here we 
are again. "Never do a thing for the first time" 
was the favorite saying to me of Prof. Hugo de 
Vries, v/hile I ran his experimental garden in Am- 
sterdam, and I find it as true a saying as the 
American advice: "Select your ancestors". How- 
ever, this pioneer work of ours has this advantage 
that we can tell tjthers what to avoid. 
December 31. 1917. 
