durians in the next room to you, you can not sleep. Chloride of Eme and disinfectants seem to be its necessary remedy. To eat it seems to be the sacrifice of self-respect; but, endure it for a while. with closed nostrils, taste it once or twice, and you will cry for durians thenceforth, even-I blush to write it-even before the glorious mangosteen." Listen to his laudation of the "glorious mangosteen." "Beautiful to sight, smell and taste, it hangs among its glossy leaves the prince of fruits. Cut through the shaded green. and purple of the rind, and lift the upper half as if it were the cover of a dish, and the pulp of half-transparent, creamy whiteness stands in segments like an orange, but rimmed with darkest crimson where the rind was cut. It looks too beautiful to eat; but how the rarest, sweetest essence of the tropics seems to dwell in it as it melts to your delightful taste." One need not titilate the palate to enjoy such fruit. Can they be so delectable? Surely we can find a place for them somewhere in America.

Let us turn to a few examples of promising vegetable and farm crops of foreign countries not yet cultivated in the United States. Only those which give most emphasis to the present paper can be mentioned.

All know that rice furnishes the chief food of China, but few are aware that sorghum is as important a crop in Asia as rice and that it is the chief food of a large part of Africa. In China, not only are the stalks of sorghum used, but bread is made from the seeds. In parts of India, sorghum is the staff of life. The Zulu Kaf firs live on the stalks which are chewed and sucked, and Livingstone says the people grow fat thereon." The several species of yans constitute one of the cheapest and most widely distributed food plants in the world, yet the yam is little grown in America. Sev eral genera of aroideae, as caladium, alocasia, colocasia and arum. each with innumerable varieties, furnish taro, arrowroot, ape and other more or less familiar food to the South Sea islanders. In a bulletin from the United States Department of Agriculture, under the title, Promising Root Crops for the South, these aroids, called under their native names of yautias, tares and dasheens, are recom mended as most valuable wet-land root crops for the South Atlantic and Gulf States. Of the place of the cocoanut in the world's economy I need not speak. Varieties of maranta were grown in Misssissippi and Georgia in 1849 but disappeared. From one of the several species of this genus comes the arrowroot of commerce. well as of the inhabitants of Cape Colony, Natal and Queensland. Arrowroot is a favorite food of the Feejees and their neighbors as Arrowroot may sometime be produced profitably in America. The banana has been on our tables less than a generation, yet it is now one of the commonest foods. There are several species and many varieties yet to be introduced into the tropics of America. The leaves and buds of several agaves furnish an abundant and a very palatable food to our southern neighbors. From plants of the large genus manihot of equatorial regions, tapioca is made under conditions which could be greatly improved. As cassava, one of

these manihots is already important in the United States it may sometime complete with corn and wheat in the food supply of the country.

To quench the thirst of the teeming millions in time to come there may be a multiplicity of beverages as well as of foods to mitigate hunger. In Arabian several millions of people drink khat while in southern South America as many more millions allay their thirst with maté. Maté, according to Fairchild, can be produced at but a fraction of the cost of tea and supplies the same alkaloid in a more easily soluble form. Both contain therein the active principle in The cups that cheer but not inebriate." Sturtevant names twelve plants the leaves of which are used in different parts of the world to adulterate or in place of tea. We have but just acquired the use of cocoa and chocolate from the natives of our American tropic, and of coca cola from the negro of Africa and it is not unlikely that we shall find other similar stimulants. For drinkers of more ardent beverages, if king alcohol continues to reign, there is an abundance, the diversity and cheapness of which probably will ever as now be regulated by taste and taxes.

Time prevents my naming other valuable foreign plants that deserve to be tried in our agriculture. It is fortunate for American farming that men from the United States Department of Agriculture are now searching everywhere for new material. Saul went in search of asses and came back with a crown. So these men sent to foreign countries for material, possibly commonplace enough, are bringing back treasures the value of which in many cases will be incalculable. Introduction of seeds and plants for the nation, is work to which the institutions represented here should lend aid in every way possible.

The last of the three means of developing plants for food, and as I believe the most important, is by using either foreign species or wild native species to hybridize with established crop plants. It needs but a brief statement of what has been accomplished in increasing hardiness, productiveness, disease resistance, adaptability to soil and other deficiencies of standard crop plants, to show that through hybridization of related species we have probably the best means of augmenting our diet. Let us glance at a few recent accomplishments of hybridizations noting chiefly results with horticultural plants.

Downing in 1872 described 286 varieties of four species of plums. In the forty years that have elapsed the number has increased to 1.937 varieties representing sixteen species. Now the significant thing is that whereas Downing's plums were pure-bred species, 155 of the present cultivated plum floras are hybrids between species. Downing could recommend plums for only a few favored regions. Some kind of plum can be grown now in every agricultural region in North America. Even more remarkable is the part hybrids have played in the evolution of American grapes. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the grape could not be called a cultivated crop on this continent. Now there are sixteen species and 1.194 varieties the most significant fact being that 790, or

three-fourths of the total number, are hybrids. The grape through hybridization has become one of the commonest cultivated plants. The genus Rubus promises to attract and distract horticulturists next. As nearly as I can make out there are about 60 species of Rubus in North America. In the two completed parts of Focke's Species Ruborum, 273 species are described. Raspberries. blackberries, dewberries and their like, hybridize freely and we already have valuable fruits in the Loganberry, the purple-cane raspberry, the wine-berry and in the blackberry-dewberry crosses. If any considerable number of Focke's several hundred species can be similarly mixed and amalgamated, the genus Rubus will be one of the most valuable groups of fruits.

The speaker is studying cultivated cherries. When the work began a few years ago about a score of species were in sight. Kochne, a recent botanical monographer of the sub-genus Cerasts, to which our edible cherries belong, describes 119 species may of them but recently collected by Wilson in Asia. There are enough hybrids between species to indicate that cultivated cherries will sometime be as diversified as plums and with quite as much a vantage to the fruit.

Webber's and Swingle's work in breeding hardy citrus fruits; blight proof pears as a result of crossing Pyrus communes and Pyrus sinensis: Burbank's spectacular hybrid creations; the diver sity of types of tomatoes, potatoes, egg-plants, peppers, beans, eueurbits and other vegetables, not to mention roses, chrysanthemums, orchids and innumerable flowers, suggest the possibilities of hy bridization. We have not done what lies within our reach in crossing cereals--corn, wheat, oats, rye, buckwheat.-the latter especially remains yet to be touched by the magic wand of hybridization. Hybrid walnuts, chestnuts, hickories and oaks, promise a wonderful improvement in nuts.

The truth is that we do not know how much nor what material we have to work with in many of the groups of plants I have named. lending color to the saying that the plants with which man has most to do and which render him greatest service, are those which the botanists know least. This brings me to the last division of my subject.

Nothing is more certain than that we are at the beginning of a most fertile period in the introduction of new and the improvement of old food plants. Yet agricultural institutions are most illy prepared to take part in the movement. "Art is long and time is fleeting," can be said of no human effort more truly than of the improvement of plants and haste should be made for better preparation. Looking over the material that is usable in agricultural institutions, it seems that we are sadly lacking in the wherewithal upon which to begin. It is indispensable for effective work that we have an abundance of material and that we know well

the plants with which we are to work.

How may the material be had?

We are fortunate in the United

States in having the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction of the United States Department of Agriculture, for the importa

tion of foreign plants. This office has effective machinery for the work. It maintains agricultural explorers in foreign countries. It is in direct contact with the agricultural institutions of other countries as well as with plant-collectors, explorers, consuls, officers of other countries and missionaries. Through these agents it can reach the uttermost parts of the world. Moreover, it has trained men to identify, to inventory, to propagate and to distribute foreign plants. This office can better meet quarantine regulations than can private experimenters or state institutions. All persons interested in foreign plants ought to work in cooperation with the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction of the Department of Agriculture.

To be used advantageously material must be near at hand. This means that there must be botanic gardens. There should be in every distinct agricultural region of the country a garden where may be found the food plants of the world suitable for the region. It is strange that in the lavish expenditure of state and federal money in the agricultural institutions of the land, that so little has been done to establish and maintain comprehensive plantations of economic plants. Now that the amelioration of plants is a part of the work of agricultural colleges and experiment stations, it would seem that the establishment of such gardens is imperative. True, there are botanic gardens, but the museum idea is dominant in most of them they contain the curiosities of the vegetable kingdom, or they show the ornamental and beautiful, or they are used for purposes of instruction. We need agricultural gardens in which agricultural plants are dominant rather than recessive.

There is another difficulty quite as detrimental to progress as inability to obtain material. It is the lack of trustworthy information in regard to economic plants. Quite as necessary as agricultural gardens is an agricultural botany. In this botany must be set forth besides descriptions of species, the habitat, the migrations, the geographical relations to other plants, the changes that have occurred, how the plant is affected by man-given environment, and all similar data. Physiological facts regarding germination, leafing, flowering and fruiting, must be given. The production of such a book is a consummation devoutly to be wished. At present the information needed is best supplied by Bailey's splendid eyelopaedias but there is need of more historical and biological knowledge in agricultural botany.

I had thought to say a few words about the men who are to do this work. Material and books do not create. The man has not been lost sight of, but I should have to set forth his temper and training too hurriedly even if I could properly conceive them. But from the beginning to the end of this new sharing of food crops, the individual man trained for the work will be dominant The work to be done, however, is so vast that we cannot make an appreciable showing unless the task be divided among a great number of workers. These who will do most are such as can concentrate on particular problems the sifted experience and knowl

edge of the world. Many may sow but only the strong can gar

ner.

There should be unity of action to avoid waste. What more pathetic spectacle is there than that of isolated men in our agricul tural institutions attacking one and the same problem in which they duplicate errors and waste their efforts in what too often prove withall to be petty circle-squaring. Much of this appalling waste can be avoided by a proper spirit of cooperation. By all means let us cooperate in the melioration of plants.

In conclusion, I must end as I began by calling attention to the great probability of a near-at-hand deficiency of food. I must again urge the importance of making use of every means of increasing the supply. I have tried to call attention to the desirability of growing a greater number of food-plants as one of the means. Not to attempt to develop and utilize to its highest eliciency the vast wealth of material in the plant-kingdom for the world's food. is improvidence and is a reckless ignoring on your part and mine of splendid opportunities to serve our fellow men. It is my hope that the horticultural departments of the agricultural colleges and experiment stations of North America, represented by members of this society, may become active agents in increasing the number of food crops and thereby the world's food supply.

(President Hedrick resumes the chair.)

PRESIDENT HEDRICK: We will now have the report of the committee on horticultural courses, Professor Woodbury giving the report for the general committee and also for pomology.

PROFESSOR WOODBURY: I believe this is the third year in which the society has given attention to the problem of horticultural teaching. I think this discussion began two or three years ago and was continued last year. Following the report of the Committee on Horticultural Courses last year, some of the important divisions of this subject were recognized and the committee was divided into three sub-committees, on olericulture, floriculture and pomology. The three reports have emphasized the value of horticul ture as a subject for college teaching. Last year I endeavored to emphasize the necessity which horticulturists are under of defining their own field as a subject for college teaching. Some of us believe that it is of less importance that the type of organization be made uniform in various institutions than it is that the subjects which are taught as horticulture, whether taught under one department, or separated into three or four closely affliated departments, be thoroughly defined as subjects for college teaching. The sub-committees reporting at this time, and I am speaking for all three of them, realize that it is impossible to give ideal courses. neither do we believe that absolute uniformity or standardization for all colleges in America is either necessary or desirable. We are agreed that the horticultural subjects which are included in any given curriculum should be administered with greater vigor and efficiency than they have been.