Early American Agriculture


plants almost according to need. The work of testing and breed-
ing plants for particular climates, soils, or commercial uses is
known as adaptation.
 Acclimatization was often used synonymously with the term
introduction in the nineteenth century. Many experimenters
believed that plants could be inured to cold and adapted to sur-
vive in temperatures lower than those found in the original
environment. So strong was this belief that as late as 1882,
Alphonse De Candolle, a noted Swiss botanist, considered it
necessary to refute this view. De Candolle is recognized as the
greatest modern authority on the origin and distribution of
cultivated plants. As professor of botany and director of the
Botanical Garden at Geneva, he published many works on botani-
cal subjects.3
 The acquisition of new territories by the United States opened
up regions of new climates and soils, and intensified the search
for new plants. During this period vast areas of land were
coming into cultivation by the settlers moving westward. The
task of finding crops that might be grown in these regions fell
first upon the Patent Office and later upon the Department of
Agriculture. Many crops were imported and tried for a time, only
to be found unsuited to the land and climate or inferior to native
varieties.
 Since very early times, rulers interested in the prosperity and
independence of their governments have favored plant intro-
duction. An inscription found in Mesopotamia tells of Sargon
crossing the Taurus Mountains to Asia Minor and bringing back
specimens of trees, vines, figs, and roses for acclimatization in his
country about 2500 B.c. The earliest recorded account of an
expedition organized for the collection of plants is that of Queen
Hatshepsut of Egypt who sent ships to the "Land of Punt" in
East Africa in 1500 B.c. to procure the incense tree. At Kamo-

 3 In his famous Origin of Cultivated Plants De Candolle concluded that: "I have
not observed the slightest indication of an adaptation to cold. When the cultivation
of a species advances toward the north . it is explained by the production of
early varieties, which can ripen before the cold season, or by the custom of culti-
vating in the north in summer, the species which in the south are sown in winter ..
the northern limits of wild species...have not changed within historic times al-
though the seeds are carried frequently and continually to the north of each limit.
Periods of more than four or five thousand years, or changements of form and
duration, are needed apparently to produce a modification in a plant which will
allow it to support a greater degree of cold."